Agency
by Phaenur
Summary: Guilty and heartbroken after Cosmo's death, Tails took to the stars in search of renewed purpose. But a chance encounter with a vast warship threw the exhausted fox into the midst of a conflict he'd never known existed. Now he must navigate Rebels, Imperials, the civilians between them, and his own turbulent feelings, in a war deadlier than any he's imagined.
1. Chapter 1

Tails stared out once again through the wide viewscreen at the light show that had seared itself into his brain a little over a month ago. The yellow-furred fox kit knew all the motions he had gone through, all the motions still to come. At least when this hateful dream had form to it he could manage it – he was so familiar with it, or maybe so scared by it or just too fast a thinker to stay trapped, that he'd grown some conscious corner of his mind even while he was caught in the nightmare – but sometimes it decided to be formless. Disembodied snippets of the conversations he'd had that day, a few bizarre physical sensations his body remembered even after his brain had forgotten, and that roiling sea of painful emotions that had driven him so far out into space in search of peace.

Obviously, he hadn't found it yet.

Mercifully, the dream took shape this time. The world at the corners of his eyes swam with colors that couldn't exist in the light, but everything in front of him, everything he felt, was as real as when it had actually happened. He was in that same wide stance, gloved palms planted on the harsh brassy surface of his auxiliary bridge's control panel while the white tips of his sneakers scraped on the greenish steel decksole and the two fluffy tails that gave him his nickname curled and knotted painfully behind him. He could make out individual seams and rivets in the ship around him without even looking at them; they seemed to jump out of their proper places just to be sure he knew they were there. _Same as always, then_. _Joy_. His eyes were already fixed on the multiheaded dragon-thing directly ahead of them, the last stand of the monstrous Metarex that they'd chased across at least two galaxies, and he turned his mind's eye on them as well. _Let's get this over with_.

The planet the creature was growing out of was a shimmering blue ball, surface covered in fresh water with the same rippling blue of a well-kept pool. But a much smaller, much darker blue ball raced along the Metarex beast's wooden trunk. Tails felt his body cheer around him, but he knew better by now. He'd gone through this sequence enough times that the floating feeling of his body moving on its own no longer bothered him in the slightest. No, he knew that for all his big brother's valiant efforts Sonic was about to take a nasty hit, and things would just fall apart from there. And eventually the dream would bring him back to the same point it always did – even when he tried to set alarms to wake himself up early, the rest of the sequence stretched and compressed itself to make sure he saw everything anyway.

A sick pressure worked at his stomach, and the fox mentally frowned. Something felt off about this, and plus it was coming two whole scenes early! The Metarex had hit them all with something that leeched their energy, some spore or power field or whatever, but it hadn't quite squeezed or tugged at him the way this did. And then the klaxons went off, wailing and clanging through every different attention-grabbing tone he'd managed to come up with – but he'd only done that when he refitted the old Tornado; it hadn't been on the Blue Typhoon back when the dream was set! No, something definitely wasn't right...and the more Tails thought about it the more he realized that the sounds and sensations were affecting his _mental_ presence, not the dream-body from weeks past. Which meant...which meant...

Tails woke up panting, not with fear or sorrow like normal but instead with the sheer exertion of ripping himself out of the dream. His muscles were still locked down in sleep paralysis, sapping his energy every time he tried to move and giving him nothing but numbness in return, but he knew from more experiences than he probably should have had that that would pass in a minute or two. In the meantime, he blessed that weird little conscious edge of his brain fervently for breaking him free of the nightmare. And with that out of the way, he turned his attention to the starscape around him.

The first thing he did when his limbs worked again was slam the bulk of a tail against the alarm toggle. It had gotten him out of bed, sure, but he needed his brain clear right now. With the screaming vibrating noise out of the way, he was free to hear a _second_ screaming vibrating noise, and with a shudder he realized it was coming from his engines. His instruments told him that the Tornado was burning through energy at an impossible rate trying to back away from something – a literally impossible rate, or at least it should be since the solar panels he'd built into the wings before taking off on his own ought to be drawing power from every star that had ever shone on this chunk of space. He couldn't tell if he was moving, couldn't really tell _anything_ , and he looked up through his canopy to try to figure out what was wrong.

The first thing he noticed was that for whatever reason the stars had decided not to shine here. Then he realized that wasn't quite true; there were a few almost perfect circles of what could have been starlight if it wasn't so _constant_ dotted around, with one hanging bow-on to him like the sun on a foggy morning. Now that he was looking for it, though, there was also something like a pane of light – no, a globe, he realized as he squinted in at it – turning that circle into the rim of a black sphere about the size of the sun he'd grown up under. And that bizarre rolling tension was still there, like he was being stretched in every direction at once. _No_! _This isn't fair_! _I woke up, this thing didn't get a chance to spawn in my dream_. His breath caught, shredding his throat, and when it came back again it was roaring as fast and hard as his engines. _And Cosmo...Cosmo destroyed the real one_.

That last memory slammed an axe down on the neck of his thoughts. He might have adapted to the dreams by now, but he couldn't see how he could ever "adapt" to what he'd done, to what his friends had sacrificed for him. And _wanting_ to get over it – wasn't that even worse? Cosmo had trusted him, had trusted _Sonic_ , and he'd gotten her... _no, don't lie, Tails_. He hadn't just "gotten her killed," he'd shot her himself, and the fact that she'd asked him to didn't change that at all. The least he could do was live with the memory.

Tails forced himself to open his eyes and look at the thing looming before him. It wasn't the big black orb the Metarex had created after all, was it? No, there was something different about this. That had actually been a black solid with light seeping through; this was more like a glaze of white over a chunk of space. And judging from that odd tapering pressure – no, that _acceleration_ – he'd stumbled across something that might quite possibly have been even more dangerous.

 _That explains why my ring gate dumped me here, I guess_. _I'm going to need to tweak it later though; this is_ way _too close to a black hole for comfort_.

Oddly enough, that realization settled him down. He might be in just as much danger, but this was just a force of nature. It didn't have the same pain attached as what he'd _thought_ he'd been looking at did.. And now that he was awake and more importantly aware, Tails could put together a plan to pull away from the not-quite-overwhelming gravitational shear of the singularity ahead of him.

He'd designed the pods on the Tornado's wings to fire smoothly as he swiveled his joystick, the better to simulate the atmospheric flight he loved, but right now that meant he'd kick himself forward towards the event horizon instead of pulling straight back unless he played things exactly right. The engines on their own wouldn't do enough either, obviously, and his emergency boosters were aft-only, so he _had_ to get himself turned around a bit past perpendicular to the pull before he could break away. This was going to take some fine timing, and unfortunately Doctor Robotnik back home had always held the upper hand in computer programming. Tails had more of a mechanical mind, which meant this was going to be manual.

The fox shrugged his shoulders and settled back into the warm damp padding of his flight chair. _Well_ , _this is what you tell people you're good at_. _Time to live it_. His toes curled and uncurled, scraping yet another layer off the ragged insoles of his sneakers as he prepared himself. His tails rolled down along his legs to curl around the thrust control pedals – he wasn't used to that posture, but this wouldn't be the first time he'd used it either, and he knew from practice runs that he'd automatically pay closer attention to what his tails were doing in such a weird place. It wouldn't help him much in a dogfight, but for sensitive maneuvers like this...well, it was a good idea in theory. _Stop second-guessing yourself_ , _Tails_. _You need to do this_ fast.

That he did. _I wish Sonic were here_. _He could do anything fast_. _I bet he'd even be able to outrun this thing if he had a track to run_ on! His big brother had done plenty of even more amazing things in their short six years together. Of course, he'd left the hedgehog behind when he went soul-searching – he'd have driven him crazy with all of this sleeping in a confined space – but just the thought settled him down the rest of the way. _I'm going to come home once I'm happy again_ , _big bro_. _I promised_.

Well, if he was going to do that then he needed to break out of the gravity trap sooner rather than later. He couldn't maintain life support, engines, instruments, and everything else for more than a few minutes if he had to keep burning at full power like this, so now was definitely preferable to later. His tails knotted themselves around the pedals with a strength and dexterity no feral fox could have imagined and he leaned gently on his joystick. It was a tender touch at first, and he choked back forward thrust and opened the reverse just as easily. Then, as his nose began to swing and the light across the black hole spiraled into a prism and back to white, he pushed it all a little harder. Then more, then more still, working the thrust controls in near-perfect tandem with the stick as he yanked himself away from danger.

Now came the tricky part – he was almost side-on to the singularity now, and the gravitational shear was doing remarkably odd things to his rotation already. He'd have to completely reverse his thrust, go from mostly pivoting left to full-ahead in an instant, or else he'd stall out and have to start over again as he swung back in. If he was lucky. But he could _feel_ the pull his tails were giving, a gift he'd known he had but had never had to test like this before, and he knew almost exactly where the pedals needed to end up. _Come on_ , _come on_! _Just a little more_. He felt the tension along his side now, plucking only at his left tail instead of both at once, and he worried for just a moment that he'd miscalculate because of that before stamping down hard on the fear. Normally it helped him prepare for things, but in the moment like this it was only getting in the way.

Tails wasn't entirely sure how long he'd hung there, but his flier's instinct kicked in and he yanked the throttle controls to their opposite positions while letting the joystick stand freely. The little blue jet still wasn't quite pulling away, though – _now_! He leaned forward and slammed his fist on a yellow-striped panel, kicking the emergency boosters into action. The small fox went slamming back into his seat as the sudden rush of acceleration did more to his body than the black hole had ever managed. Now that his speed was up he leaned on the stick one last time, using the little bit of distance he'd gained to complete his turn. He'd started in a nosedive, brought himself up to a decaying orbit, and was finally rocketing away a bit more than perpendicular to the singularity's pull, and his shoulders squished into the sweat-soaked fabric of his chair.

His breath finally eased up and he realized his adrenaline had fired the way it normally did when he tried to keep up with Sonic, slowing the world down around him so he could move at full speed. It was second nature to him now on foot – well, not _exactly_ on foot, he reflected with a tired smile – but he rarely had it happen in a vehicle like this. _Must have been even more stressed than I thought_. According to his energy readouts, the whole maneuver had lasted the longest thirty-two seconds of his young life. No, not quite the longest, that wasn't true. That honor still belonged to Cosmo's death. Tails let his eyes close and sagged back in his seat as the shear faded away behind him, automatically using his tails to bring the plane to a halt so he could find a safer chunk of space later.

And that was exactly why he was so surprised to feel a sudden yank on his ears and whiskers as a fresh force jerked the whole plane upwards before he could even get back to sleep. He looked up through the curved glass of his canopy at a hulking triangular profile with what looked like four big...no, he didn't like thinking about those, they distracted him. Four big _spheres_ dangling below. He worriedly cycled through his radio frequencies, tuning them again and again to everything he could reach, but all he could hear was a rush of static no matter where he tried. That big hulk was getting closer and closer and Tails sat back in his chair with a whimper. He didn't have the energy in himself or his plane to make a run for it.

Besides, he'd come out here looking for something to do, after all. For someone to help. _For someone to help_ me.

* * *

It took perhaps five minutes by Tails's internal clock to get inside the belly of the rescuing ship, by which time he'd tested every radio frequency he was set to pick up and found nothing but starglow noise whipped into a nightmarish howl by the black hole cluster. White floodlights snapped on just before he arrived, leaving the young fox blinking away big rectangular afterimages instead of checking his surroundings – probably exactly why they'd done it. _So much for_ " _rescuing_ " _then_. _Of course, they're still getting me away from the black holes out there so I guess they can't be all bad_.

Still, from the little his limited natural night vision had been able to make out these people seemed to be going out of their way to be intimidating. Their ship was indeed a giant isosceles triangle with those four...bulges making it much more massive than it needed to be, and he'd gotten glimpses of great hulking turrets poking out from any surface they could fit on. Not the Typhoon's single fixed-frontal cannon either; these were double-barreled or more and clearly mounted to hammer anything before or beside the big ship. The little fox had to wonder exactly what the ship's designers had met that needed that much killing. _Of course, I know something that did_.

His overloaded eyes finally started responding again as the Tornado grated to a stop against an obsidian decksole. Bright while lights above, walls so grey they might as well have been black, and an assortment of pipes and cables and cranes all around him only added to the shadow and confusion. And then he looked down, noticing for the first time the double lines of green-grey armored figures with their stubby black rifles pointed directly at his head. He smiled as charmingly as he could – not very, considering the circumstances – taking special care not to bare his teeth. Sure, Sonic and Amy and Chuck had all told him his stubby fangs made him look even cuter, but this was _not_ the time or place to test that on a new audience.

A trooper with an orange shoulder panel that contrasted hideously with the battleship green of his armor trotted to the Tornado and started pounding on the airframe. "All right, all right, I'm getting out," Tails muttered to himself as he popped the canopy and gently eased it back. He pressed both hands ostentatiously against the clear polymer as another gesture of peace, although presumably for all the soldiers knew he had two extra limbs – come to think of it, he _did_ , but the less people knew about his tails the easier things would be for him whether he had to assimilate or run away. As soon as the canopy was far enough up the orange-flagged trooper grabbed Tails roughly by the bangs, scrabbling for a better grip on the kit's scalp, and Tails reflexively brought a tail up to bat the gauntlet aside.

That was, of course, a mistake. The other arm came up, bringing a carbine with it, and any attempts at resistance promptly ended as the cold black metal slammed hard against Tails's temple. He probably could have recovered from that hit – he'd certainly had enough experience at it – but his head snapped against the canopy's sharp rim and then back into the rifle. As the hangar swam behind ever-darkening gel, the kit's last thoughts were of how lucky he was not to feel the man ripping his fur out anymore.

Tails's skull was still singing with the cold reverberations of the blow as he opened his eyes again. He couldn't hear much of anything around his injury, but at least he could tell where he was now. _Whoever designed this ship must have had a floodlight fetish or something_ , he thought as the bloom resolved itself into a darkened yet oddly familiar figure. Most of the kit's surprise was at his own _lack_ of surprise as he realized he was staring at a human. _Heh_. _Rouge did say she ran into more of them out there_. The memory sent nausea washing through his stomach that had nothing to do with the way his heartbeat was pounding through his forehead. _Hope there's nothing like those...roots out in this part of space_. The fox kicked at the decksole idly, feeling his bare paw-pads scrape against impressively slick tile. _Figures they wouldn't leave me my things, doesn't it_? _Funny how it's more of a problem when I outgrow my shoes than when someone strips me_. _Bet they gave me a good brushing too – just business for them, but I won't complain_.

The man leaned in close, resting his chin on his knuckles as he loomed over the tired young fox. Tails realized as he moved that the man's void-black silhouette wasn't just a function of the overly bright lights. No, some genius tailor had given him black armor over an equally black jumpsuit, and to continue the theme he had on what looked like a black plastic helmet with a broad sweeping neckpiece. _Who comes up with this stuff_? _It's like they're_ trying _to look as evil as possible or something._ At least with something to think about the worst of his pain fell away, although he knew from a decade's hard experience that he'd feel pain and frustration chasing each other in circles if he tried to multitask for a while.

"Well, it seems you're awake. What are you doing all the way out here in the Maw, hmm?" The man had a high, thin accent that reminded Tails distinctly of Earth's quasi-historical television shows. Not a narrator, though – more like, once again, the people they hired to play the villains. The fox guessed he should have been surprised that this man spoke the same language as Chris and Chuck and Eggman – and, oddly, as most of the little one-planet species they'd met on the Metarex expedition – but for some reason that didn't seem to faze him either. It might have just been nerves though. He'd been asked enough questions in that tone of voice before that he didn't even consider refusing.

"My name is Miles Prower," Tails answered with a wince. He knew as much from experience as from the man's flinch that he was talking too loudly, but right now he was having a hard enough time hearing his own voice that they would both need to put up with it. "Most people just call me –"

"Did I ask that?" Tails wasn't sure how the man could possibly loom any more ominously than he already was with the low metal bench between them, but he seemed determined to try. "No. Who and what you are is irrelevant. I asked you what you were doing out here." The man paused for just a second, but before the fox could even start to put together a reply he pushed ahead. "Smugglers have cut through the Maw for longer than we've patrolled it, of course, but it's a rare criminal that tries to make the Kessel Run without a hyperdrive. Or in a ship we've never seen before and that doesn't match a single registry in the archives."

Tails frowned and picked his head off the table. He started to lean forward only to catch against a restraint he hadn't even noticed before. _I half-expected them to go with a metal chain_. _This seatbelt is downright civilized_! "I'm no criminal, sir," he said as gently as honor would allow. "And the Tornado's my own design. Well, not really, I guess, it's not like I built it myself, but Sonic lets me fly it and repair it and tinker with it a little when I feel bored. Honestly, a whole bunch of other people've made additions to it. In fact, it wouldn't be spaceworthy without Eggm –" He tasted blood as the man cuffed him with a gauntlet just as hard and sharp as the trooper's had been. "Hey!" It might have given him a gash – from the feel of it, he'd gotten one both inside his mouth and out – but this man had nothing on the soldier from earlier. Chaos, even some of his bullies back in the Emerald Hill Zone had slugged him harder!

"We'll get the history out of you in due time. I'm still waiting on an explanation." The man gripped Tails's shoulders firmly and hauled him against the restraints until they were literally nose-to-nose, and the fox squeaked and squirmed as the "civilized" seatbelt crushed his lungs. "What are you doing here?"

Tails frantically searched his overloaded brain for a coherent reply, but another voice from elsewhere in the room rescued him. "I could ask you the same, Ensign Onasi." His interrogator released him and jumped to his feet with a salute and a look incongruously like Sonic's after being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "New prisoners are processed by the Chief of Intelligence, not his junior clerk." The newcomer's heels clicked against the deck as he crossed over to the suddenly _much_ less confident young officer. He wore the same bizarre helmet but no armor, instead keeping steel-green fatigues slightly lighter than the armor Tails had seen earlier. More interesting was the pistol at his hip, which looked like a bizarre hybrid between a toy ray-gun and one of Eggman's portable factories, and he planted a too-wide black glove on the grip as he addressed the other officer.

"Major Ulgo, sir." Yes, the ensign was definitely sweating now, and Tails took a perverse satisfaction in watching. He knew it was wrong of him, that it wasn't much different from being the sycophant to one of his childhood bullies, but the sense that there was indeed justice in the universe more than outweighed his distaste. "You were off-duty this shift and I assumed, sir, that –"

"Of course you did, Onasi. I can't think of a single decision you've made that wasn't based on a faulty assumption." Tails wished he knew how this Major Ulgo could keep his baritone voice simultaneously pleasant, forceful, and aristocratic. _Maybe "paternal" is the best word for it, although Sonic didn't ever take that tone with me_. _Guess I was lucky_. "This is the first thing our department has had to do in a week and a half since we shipped out from the Enclave, and you 'assumed' I wouldn't make time? You'll get your chance, ensign, but this isn't it."

"Sir, I was about to –"

The major waved his hand dismissively. _Maybe that glove isn't as floppy as it looks_. _It didn't move at all –_ _guess I'm so used to growing into Sonic's old pair that I assume they slide around on anyone's hands if they aren't lashed down_. "You were about to injure the prisoner for no likely gain. Whether it's ignorant or complicit, jumping directly to the core question guarantees you won't get a straight answer from it. Remember?"

Ensign Onasi bristled. "Sir, I am an officer in the Imperial Navy, no matter how junior. I hardly need a lecture on basic interrogation protocols!"

"Clearly you do." If Tails hadn't still been nursing the fresh cut on his gum line he probably would have giggled at the major's ferociously raised eyebrow. "We can discuss this later, ensign. Out!" The ensign drew himself up but then visibly thought better of it, fired off a brusque salute, and stalked out of the room. The door hissed open at his approach and then back shut the instant he cleared the opening. Then Major Ulgo settled into the chair Onasi had just vacated. "He's just eager to please, which wouldn't be an issue if he was actually competent," he told the young fox. "His great-great-something grandfather was a war hero and the family's never quite lived up to his reputation. So he gets an excess of zeal whenever he thinks he can show off to somebody. Still, he's right; we genuinely need to know what you were doing in this part of space."

Tails wrinkled his nose and squinted at the officer. "May I work my way up to it this time, sir?" he asked a hair more confrontationally than he'd meant to – well, more like a full winter coat more confrontationally, if he was honest.

"Whatever gets us both out of here as easily as possible," the major told him with a grin. Tails wished he could make out the man's eyes against the harsh backlight, because with the limited detail he could make out through the wash he had no idea if it was genuine. _Best to be generous then_. _He seems nice enough, even if this is a good-cop-bad-cop routine_. _Thank the Emeralds for human television; I learned so much from it_.

"All right, sir. Well, like I was telling the ensign, my name is Miles Prower but most people just call me Tails. I prefer it, but I understand if you use the long form."

Already the major stalled him with a raised hand. "Seriously? 'Tails?' Well, I suppose it has the benefit of simplicity."

Tails returned the grin. "Wait until you meet my friends Sonic and Knuckles."

"I can imagine," the major told him in a desert-dry voice. "All right, Miles, go ahead."

Tails tried not to wince too hard at the use of his given name. _At least he didn't catch the terrible pun_! "Okay. I'm not really sure what to say, though. I mean, I guess I came out here...joyriding?" He gave Ulgo a hopeful look.

"Joyriding. In the Maw. No, try again."

Tails frowned. How to explain this without ripping open his wounds again? "No, sir, not just in the Maw. I've been jumping from system to system for about a month now looking for something to do. My computers just stopped me short before I ran into a black hole out there."

Ulgo nodded fractionally, drumming his fingers on the table. "I don't need the Force to tell me there's a story behind that. The part that confuses me – and that I'm sure confused Master Onasi earlier – is that our techs have been turning your ship inside out and there's no sign of any hyperdrive."

"Or much of anything else you'd recognize, sir, no," Tails said. "Like I told the ensign it's my own design – well, the ring-gate system, not the plane itself – and to be honest I had no idea you people were out here. I was just meandering in from the galactic fringe, and the only people I've ever met Out There were from one planet at a time."

The nodding picked up speed. "It's amazing how much makes sense now. Like why you've still got mass drivers and chem-fired missiles. Or why you never responded to our hails before we picked you up, which is why the troops were so careful with you on the way in."

 _You call that careful_? Tails brought his namesakes up to massage his aching temples. His heartbeat still throbbed through them, but the worst of the dizziness had broken. "Out of curiosity, sir, what frequency are your communications on? I couldn't find anything but background noise on my radio."

"Radio..." Major Ulgo repeated the word several times, changing the emphasis and pronunciation each time. Finally he gave it up with a weary chuckle. "You and our technicians are going to have quite a few things to talk about."

"You said they were 'turning it inside out,' sir. Am I ever going to get it back? There are things in the Tornado that mean a lot to me."

That seemed to take the major aback. He broke off eye contact, pursing his lips as he scanned the ceiling. "That's hard to say, Miles," he told the fox absently. "If you help us out, answer our questions, then we can probably return it to you intact."

Tails smiled at him. "Don't worry about playing the good cop here, Major. I'd have told the ensign the same things if he'd have let me. Tell me what's really going on and what I can do to help out. That's what I went wandering for, after all."

"Telling us things or helping out?" Ulgo wondered aloud. "All right then. Lieutenant Bessiker's provost team ripped your ship apart while you were asleep. We all assumed you were some kind of smuggler or maybe a marooned pirate, so they went after contraband. Now Engineering and some of my Intelligence boys are trying to put it back together and make it work again, see if they can do themselves what you've already done."

"So I cool my heels in here for a while and let them try it on their own, right, sir? Otherwise it would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"

When the major had raised his eyebrow at Ensign Onasi it had been terrifying, but he managed to make the same gesture convey pride and approval now. "You're a sharp one. Have you done this before, Miles?"

The fox wrinkled his nose with amusement again, and this time the major cracked a grin in return as he recognized the body language. "Not unless you count trying to explain it all to a couple of tech-illiterate big brothers. They're smart but they never had the same interests as I did."

"You'll have to tell me all about it later, Miles, but for now I think we both have all we need for a first meeting. I or someone else on my staff – not Onasi – will be by later to check on you and fill you in on our decisions."

"Thank you, sir." Tails was genuinely grateful. He'd been kicked around and bruised by 'interrogations' much less fair than this one many, many times in the past. It was refreshing to see that no matter what their aesthetic choices may have been these humans were still, well, human. Of course..."You weren't really surprised to see Ensign Onasi in here with me, were you, sir? It was kind of too ideal for you, too ideal to pass up. You got to set up the dynamic between the two of you with me even if neither of you had to act, plus he gave you a chance to teach him a lesson and still see how I was going to behave." His voice trailed off into awed silence as he looked at the major, shining blue eyes wide.

The major stared at him with an expression almost as concussed as his own had to be. "You _are_ a sharp one," he repeated in a much different tone. He stood up awkwardly and crossed to the hatch, and Tails shielded his eyes as best he could as he caught the full blast of the floodlights. "You'll hear from us soon. For now, it might be a good idea for you to try to sleep." His hand must have crossed some sensor, because the floodlights died and were replaced by a wan glow from the hallway. Then the hatch hissed open and shut again, and the little fox was left alone in the dark once more.

* * *

Tails hadn't expected to be able to fall asleep no matter what the major had said, but the restraints were warm against his belly and the darkness was just too comfortable after all the harsh glare and sharp shadows of the rest of the ship. In fact, he transitioned from simple darkness to sleep so seamlessly he hadn't even noticed he'd done it, and when he woke up again it was much the same.

Then someone threw the lights and Tails could _definitely_ tell he was awake.

"Hey," he tried to protest, but there were already gauntlets under his armpits hoisting him bodily out of the seat. The confused fox blinked away sleep, but he was being handled too roughly and moved too quickly for him to quite figure out what was going on. Not until someone deigned to explain it to him, at least.

"Get it to the shuttles on the double, sergeant." A filtered male voice acknowledged the command as Tails shivered. Partly it was the air vent he'd just been carried under, obviously, but the woman who'd issued the order put Knuckles completely to shame as far as authority went. "Command can figure out what to do with it when it's on Kessel and not my experimental cruiser, clear?" _Kessel_. _Didn't I hear that name a while back_?

"Commander, I must protest." Good. Ulgo was here and he sounded like he was still on Tails's side. "He is clearly both sentient and gendered. Please show some degree of courtesy." _An explanation would be nice too_.

Whoever was carrying Tails stopped long enough for the fox to sort out his surroundings. Judging from his captor's pose the man was watching his commander's reaction with amusement and interest – hips cocked, head tilted enough that the helmet's face pushed the fox's right ear down – and as Tails got a clear view of the woman whose close-cut hair was a shade darker than her gunmetal uniform he could see why. Her expression was unreadable; it expressed too many sentiments – most of them negative – for the good-natured fox to pick out more than two or three. Contempt, though, contempt was definitely there.

She seemed to transfer any nervous energy to the people around her. Tails couldn't resist the urge to squirm even though it earned him another cuff across the head, but he could feel the guard behind him jittering just as badly. And at least this hit was lighter, either from distraction or sympathy. In fact, if not for the armor he might've thought it belonged to Sonic – the hand was just as big as his big brother's had been on him when they met six years before.

The commander's level soprano scythed his thoughts down. "It is an alien, Major. More to the point, though it claims extragalactic origin it closely resembles a Wookie or a Bothan, neither of which is known for their friendship to the Empire. I will not have it exploring an Interdictor cruiser like my _Fastness_ for Force knows how long while Command decides what to do with it."

"Sir, have you seen a Bothan or a Wookie with a tail? This is quite likely a first-contact situation, so again I request that you show some respect." The intelligence major practically growled out the last three words. _Let me change my original thought_. _She passes all the nerves to people who actually have a healthy sense of terror_. _Ulgo clearly doesn't._

The commander shared Tails's sentiment. "I have made many allowances for your...eccentricities on account of your recent loss, major, but I have very little tolerance for poor discipline. Not even an entire planet and the aristocratic titles attached to it can fully excuse softness or slackness of this sort, major, so set Alderaan aside and resume your duties. I have established this ship's policy towards lesser breeds and issued my orders regarding this specimen and I expect you to comply with both. Am I understood, major?"

"Yes, sir." The major's voice was as harsh and cutting as broken glass, but his commander had clearly found his vulnerability.

Tails closed his eyes, letting the sergeant carry him to wherever they were going. He'd caught the look of pain on Major Ulgo's face and wondered how anyone could lose an entire planet. _You didn't have to do that for me, sir,_ he wished he could have said. _I've been called those names plenty of times back home too_. _It always bothered Sonic more than it bothered me anyway_ – _guess that's not too different now, is it_? The man was hardly a replacement for Tails's big brother, but with today's confusion he'd take whatever he could get.

A door whirred open ahead of them and Tails opened his eyes again. The commander was nowhere to be seen, although since he could only see the people ahead of the sergeant that didn't tell him much. What he could see was a concave white wall just ahead of them – _oh, elevator_. _Right_.

"Sergeant, you can set him down." _Good to hear he's still here at any rate_. "Commander Toleo's gone back up-ship." _And that answers my question_. _He's doing this on purpose, isn't he_?

Well, there was one way to find out. "Is she really gone?" he asked, voice trembling with unfeigned fear. If he was being set up he'd rather the punishment land on him alone, but he'd much rather it not land in the first place.

The voice behind the helmet chuckled, a harsh and flat sound through the breath mask. "She stormed off after Nautilus stared her down." Tails really did wince this time. _Sweet Chaos, no wonder the poor man didn't laugh at my name_! _What kind of parent does it take to name someone_ "Nautilus?"

"Remember that my name is on the Official Secrets List. Distribution is punishable by death," the major told them in tones far too frosty to be real. He confirmed it a moment later with a soft chuckle.

The sergeant let go of Tails at last and the fox slithered down his body to form a little furry puddle on the elevator floor. He hoisted himself up with all six limbs and dusted his fur ostentatiously. _After a month in the Tornado it's not like that'll make a difference anyway_. He turned around as much as he could so he could finally face both of them, and looked up – way up – into their faces. The soldier might have been the same one who had clubbed him earlier or it could be someone of the same rank; the death's-head mask made it impossible to tell. At least the fox could guess that the orange pauldron probably designated a sergeant, since that was what he'd just been called. The red and blue checkerboard on the major's breast was substantially harder to read, but Tails figured he'd have time to figure it out later. All right, it was time to clear the air. "Um, major, sir, thanks for sticking up for me back there but really, it's all right. I've heard it all before."

"You told me he was exo, major." _Exo-what_? _Exo...oh, right, ex_ tra _galactic_.

"I thought that too," the major said almost conversationally. "You've run into humanist prejudices before then? Where?"

Tails shook his head quickly. "No, no. I mean on my own planet. Because of these." He wound his tails around himself and grabbed the ends, presenting them to the two men.

"Your species normally doesn't have tails, then? Might explain the nickname," the major muttered.

"Not quite." The fox dropped his namesakes and held up his left index finger as he slid into professorial mode. "My world has a large number of different species – at least, we act like they're species, although from what a few of them have said it's possible to interbreed. Not really my thing," he clarified hurriedly, causing the sergeant to snort through his mask. "I'm a fox, my best friend Sonic is a hedgehog, stuff like that. Pretty much everyone has exactly one tail, though, so I got called a freak for it. Anyway," he forged ahead before he could dredge up some of _those_ old memories, "skeletons are pretty close to identical too, although builds are all over the place. Um, you're interested, right?" He wasn't sure what to make of the look the major was giving him.

"Fascinating," the man said, but he still seemed distracted. _He's been curious this whole time, Tails_. _He's probably just processing everything you've told him_.

"Okay, moving on then –" The elevator door rushed open, causing Tails to jump back against the cold polymer wall. He hadn't even noticed the thing start moving! "How far did we go?" he asked haltingly, already dreading the answer.

"Military secret," the sergeant answered. _Well, it's straightforward at least_. _Doesn't overload me with excess information or anything_ , _which is probably more than they can say for me_. Instead of dwelling on it, then, the fox looked out past his escorts at the new room. There were a couple of cross-corridors, all that same oppressive mix of blacks and steel greys, but just out past that he could see a room that promised to be massive. "Hangar's ahead. Climb on, then, fox." With no further warning the sergeant scooped Tails up again and clattered out of the elevator, letting the major's measured stride ring out just behind them.

* * *

The hangar was if anything even bigger than it looked from the access hallway, although the towering blue-white force field holding out the vacuum did little to rein it in. Racks across the ceiling held twelve odd little craft with insanely tall hexagonal...no, no matter how the fox squinted he couldn't bring himself to call them "wings." Although come to think of it, dedicated spaceframes wouldn't need airfoils like the Tornado did, and unless he missed his guess there were solar panels set into those odd frames too. He'd done his best to disguise his panels, putting aesthetics before efficiency, but basic black would certainly fit the ominous theme these people had going.

 _And speaking of ominous_... There was a hunk of light grey metal waiting for them, a large rectangle resting on three bird-legs with three giant fins reaching for the ceiling. More importantly, though, there were five more troopers just behind it, these ones in bright white armor with slightly more elaborate detailing on the shoulders and greaves. Tails wasn't entirely sure if that put them above, below, or just parallel to the green-suited crew from earlier, but what it meant in the meantime was that the major probably didn't have as much authority here. For that matter, the sergeant probably didn't either, which meant he was back on his best behavior. _Just when I was starting to relax, too_.

"This him?" one of the white-armors asked. Whatever speaker set was in that armor made him sound exactly like the sergeant. _This is going to make things awkward. At least he's using "he" and not "it," which I guess is kind of a big thing around here_. Tails shook his head at his own thoughts. _Okay, Tails, face it,_ _Sonic had a point. It was a big thing back home too, and it took the humans on Earth a little while to figure it out even with him, ah, reinforcing it for them_.

"He's all yours, trooper," the major said. "Esseeyoh-nine-five," _Oh, that's SC 095 – probably the sergeant here, although I've got no idea what the number means,_ "will be going along with you as the Intelligence liaison. Remember, gentlemen, best behavior. No matter what the commander's policy might be, this is a unique situation and you have the opportunity to show the Empire's best." Tails had to perk up his ears to catch what the man muttered next. "Force knows we could use it after Yavin got out." _No idea what_ that _means either_. _I hope wherever I end up has a library to curl up in_. _Or a computer screen; as long as I've got a nice soft cushion and something interesting to wade through I'm not too picky_.

The sergeant hoisted him up the ramp and the other troopers fell in behind them. The big slab of metal ground its way up behind them, hissing closed with the refreshing sound of a good seal. The fox looked around for seats or an acceleration couch or even a handlebar dangling from the ceiling but there was nothing to be found. _To be fair, you didn't notice the elevator moving either_. But he definitely knew when the shuttle took off; no pilot could ever miss that sensation – or the comedy inherent in watching turfers stumble all over themselves at the slightest shift. The noisy white armor only added to the humor, and judging from the twitches that occasionally spat through the deck whoever was at the helm was enjoying this as much as he was.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the fox made the mistake of laughing aloud. He wilted under the troopers' hot glares even through their helmets. _Please let me just turn into a fox-shaped puddle on the deck before –_

"So, you boys hear about the new breed of silicon spider in Kessel?" _Wait, "in" Kessel_? _I thought it was going to be a planet_... "Something about drinking liquified brains, I think it was. Or was that just one of the prisoners?"

A trooper across from the first speaker piped up next. "No, pretty sure that was the spider. Those things swarm all over the heavy-labor teams in the mines. Bet they'd be fond of prey that's smart enough not to get spice-screwed too."

"Or that's smart in the first place," the first soldier agreed. "Besides, that's the kind that can probably get away from the rest of the inmates long enough for the spiders to actually have a chance."

 _Inmates_? _Mines_? _What kind of planet_ is _this and why am I going there_? Tails felt like shrieking, but he didn't want to give the soldiers the satisfaction.

"No such luck for them here," a third soldier – Tails thought – spoke up. "Figure this furball's getting the VIP treatment considering that Imp-Int's got the sergeant watching over him."

"'The sergeant' is sitting right here," 095 growled. Tails wished he knew the man's name, it would make things a lot less awkward. As it was the fox desperately wanted to hide in a corner and let the walls press in on him like a warm safe blanket until things were sane again.

"You know what the sector bosses are like on that dustball. Only guy I can think of who gets off work right now is that Antilles kid we picked up at the Enclave yards."

Something in the atmosphere changed as the sergeant spoke up. "Who?" His tone drew Tails's attention like a magnet, and the way he gripped the butt of his pistol kept it there.

"Um, no idea, sir. Sorry, sir."

"Smart," the sergeant muttered, easing himself back down. "Right, enough horseplay for tonight, team. We'll hit the orbitals in eleven standard if the pilot knows what he's doing for a change, and from what I've seen of you shiny-boys I fully expect you'll have better things to do than sleep even when you're in bed by the time we're down there." Tails felt his cheeks heat as he caught the man's meaning. "I'll watch the furball, the rest of you catch whatever rest you're going to." Tails really did go pack himself into a corner now, wadding one tail up in the small of his back and the other behind his neck. He'd slept plenty recently but somehow he wasn't in the mood to explore right now. "Sweet dreams, fox," 095 called across the room. "Don't worry about brain-eating spiders or prisoners whose whole families are locked up for poaching and illegal fur trades or..." The sergeant kept droning on and the fox did his best to drown it out. _Okay, I get it_! _No more laughing at people still growing their air legs_. _Sweet Chaos, is he_ still _going_?

Even through his practiced silliness, though, Tails couldn't shake the feeling that the troopers had been doing more than swatting him down with tall tales. _Sweet dreams_ , _huh_? _Oh boy, this is going to be fun_.

Still, it was also going to be an adventure, even if it turned out to involve dodging giant spiders in a pitch-black cave somewhere on someone else's world. And adventure was what Sonic had raised him on, and adventure was what he'd come out looking for. He'd have quite the story to share with his big brother once he found his way home from this!


	2. Chapter 2

The shuttle's main cabin was eerily quiet. Oh, there was the constant throbbing hum of the little ship's engines in the background, but Tails was so used to that sound from the Tornadoes and Typhoon that it barely deserved a mental footnote. As for human noises, the fox's escort must have been either asleep or completely apathetic. He'd had a chance to wander the entire cabin, such as it was, and none of them had said or done anything to rein him in. Of course, it wasn't like there was anything _he_ could have done to the ship, after all.

It had been the realization that Sonic's screwdriver was gone that did Tails in. Oh, it made sense that his captors would have confiscated it, sure, and from what he'd seen of the local engineering it wouldn't have actually fit any of the fasteners, but all of that was beside the point. His big brother had given him the little tool with its translucent green handle during their first year together, right when he had realized Tails's affinity for machines, and the little fox had carried it tucked into his tail fur quite literally every day since. He'd even slept with it stowed away, a little reminder of home and of safety. And now it was locked away aboard a ship he'd probably never see again, right there next to the little black bands Sonic had plucked from his own shoes to fasten Tails's very first pair of gloves six years ago.

The fox was already curled up in a corner of the ship between two walls and an empty flight couch, and as the negative train of thought bulled through he pressed himself harder against the three walls. The dull vibrations of the engines flowed through him, keeping him awake even as the deep comforting pressure from the bulkheads lulled him to sleep. When he'd been a kit he'd been able to dig a little nest anywhere, even in the deep winter snow, which had served him well considering he'd had no choice until Sonic had found him. He hadn't lost the skill since then, but nowadays there were too many thoughts for even a cozy den like the one he was in now to give him peace. _If nestling into something was enough I'd never have gone out here in the first place_!

Well, if he wasn't going to be sleeping anytime soon he might as well focus those thoughts on something productive. _What is there to think about, though_? _Half the people I've met hate me for what I am –_ _nothing new there – and the other half just see me as a prisoner anyway_. _I was so_ happy _when I got in the shuttle and now I can't even remember why_! The plating was cold and harsh against his bare pads. _Sonic gave me those shoes too, and all the ones before them_. _He's going to be so upset that I lost everything_.

Oddly enough it was that thought that broke the spiral. _No_. _Sonic doesn't give up on people no matter how many times they mess things up_. _You're living proof of that, Tails_. _But he can't help you if you never see him again_. _So start thinking_! He popped himself out of his little corner, spine shifting and popping as he stood. _Let's see, there's the entry hatch on the wall across from me, which means this door on my right ought to be that stubby little cockpit I saw from the outside_. _I don't see the engines though_... _wait_.

Now that he was actually looking instead of just moping around and trying to hide, the wide rectangular discolorations in the back corners of the shuttle stood out clearly. _Got to be downstairs_ , the fox nodded to himself. _And if I was a sane designer –_ _no guarantees_ – _I'd put an access panel at chest height, although I guess I'd need to jump to hit it on a human ship_. But there wasn't anything after all, not a lever or a button or even a little light switch, just a flat monochrome bulkhead. "Not sure whether I'm the crazy engineer or they are," Tails muttered under his breath. "Weird that people can't get to the engines from the main deck, but maybe they've got a reason."

"Keeping too-curious kids out, that's the reason." Tails felt his heart, ears, and tails leap straight up as the sergeant's altered voice rolled across the room. The fox looked slowly over his shoulder, guilt flooding his face. The troopers were definitely all awake now, he could see their shoulders shaking with snickers he was glad were muted. And now that he saw it, the sergeant's carbine was aimed right at him from the man's lap. "I used to think that every prisoner we'd ever take would try to blast their way into the hyperdrive, at least take us with him. But here we were asleep on a crash couch and all our guns are right where we left them. Still not letting you in, though," he added as the relieved Tails started to look back at the sealed floor hatch. "You might not want to sabotage us but you'd probably get wedged in a power conduit or something."

"Hey!" Tails puffed up a little. "I know what I – "

"If you knew what you were doing, fox," one of the plain-armored troopers cut in, "you wouldn't be wasting your time looking for the switch. Anyone else'd know exactly what a _Lambda_ looked like."

"And don't bother with the cabin door either," the sergeant told him. "Same set-up. Now go curl up again like the good throw rug the Commander wanted to turn you into. We'll hit Kessel's hyper point in probably another five hours."

Tails meandered back to his corner with one last sulky look over his shoulder. No matter how he tried to pad the walls with his namesakes this time, though, he couldn't get that sense of shelter back again. _I thought I was at least a good engineer, a good mechanic_. _What'll I do if I'm not even that anymore_?

For five hours a silent ball of yellow fur stared longingly at a rectangular hatch in the floor, imagining what was beneath it and knowing he'd never be trusted enough to find out.

* * *

Tails hadn't managed to get to sleep, so he was the first person in the cabin to feel the shuttle leave hyperspace. The vibrations in his pretend den's walls stopped for just an instant then revved up again, but slower and heavier this time. He felt himself sliding into the metal legs of the flight couch as fresh acceleration pressed him away from the forward wall. _Must have left FTL behind_. _Wonder if it works like the ring-gate then, where it keeps the same speed from one end of the jump to the other_? _Doesn't sound like it from the little bits I've heard though_. The thoughts were a welcome distraction to everything else that had filled his skull while he'd wound himself tighter between his soft tails.

The fox levered himself off of the floor, stretching his arms above his head and winding his tails luxuriously. He felt his spine decompress as he moved and wished yet again that his mind was as easy to deal with. Since reentry was bound to be a unique experience, he locked himself down in the flight couch and rested his head against the bulkhead again. The crash webbing – _oh, call it what it is, Tails_ – the _seatbelt_ pressed an X into his white chest fur and held his hips down snugly, an arrangement that was almost as comfortable as his nest in the corner. As the acceleration eased up the troopers started looking across the cabin at him again.

"Well, look who hasn't crawled into a power line yet," the sergeant muttered, sleepiness obvious in his voice even through the helmet. Still, it faded fast and he snapped what looked like a couple of plastic bracers open lengthwise across his knee. "You've got maybe twenty minutes of freedom left before I have to slap these on you, fox. Enjoy them."

 _Wonderful_. _If there was any doubt as to what was going to happen to me, well, there it goes_. Still, he might as well make the most of it. "I'd have a lot more fun if I got to tour the engines," he said with a too-wide smile. "Or the cockpit."

The smile sagged into shock as the sergeant cocked his head. "Cabin should be fine, actually, as long as you're willing to wear these now." He jangled the wrist cuffs by the length of segmented cable that joined them. "I'm sure you understand."

Tails swallowed hard but nodded anyway. "I do, sir." _No reason to push things_. _I'd never get away even if I could go through with it in the first place_. "If you're going to tie me up you'd better have a second pair of those for my tails though."

The troopers' reactions were gratifying. Somehow they managed to whip their heads around to stare at him even though they'd already been looking his way, and it wasn't hard at all for the little fox to imagine the wide-eyed stares behind those gaunt black visors. _I'm more likely to live through this if I get them to trust me_. _Might not get to use my hands for a long time anyway, but I think I'd rather wait than get blasted away_. "I'm almost tempted to see what you can do with them, fox," the sergeant said with an unmistakable chuckle. "But if you're going to let me get away with not shooting you I think I'll take your advice." _I'd like that too_. "Well, come over here then."

Tails fumbled around for a moment before finding the release for his seatbelt, and then popped upright and walked tamely across the cabin. He felt himself blushing, his ears sticking straight up and his tails trying to do the same as he turned around and let the trooper bind him. It had happened before, of course, but for whatever reason the thought of letting himself be bound _voluntarily_ was more embarrassing than actually getting captured had been. More embarrassing, but less humiliating. He scuffed the decksole awkwardly, the coarse pads on his toes and the ball of his foot catching the metal more than the smooth-worn rubber of his sneakers ever had aboard the Typhoon. He jerked his hands away reflexively from the tickle when the man grabbed them – it wasn't deliberate, but he'd gotten so used to wearing his gloves that the skin beneath them was too sensitive for its own good. Nothing came of it, at least, and by the fifth or sixth try he was able to hold himself steady enough to let the soldier do what he was there for. As much as he hated the foreign weights on his tails they at least went on much more smoothly, and with that he was as restrained as he was going to get. _I'd feel a lot better about this if I'd actually been smart enough to beat the Metarex_. _Smart enough to save Cosmo_. _Why would I be smart enough to save_ myself _now if I couldn't do it for someone else_?

"Deal's a deal," the sergeant grumbled, standing up behind Tails and nudging the brooding fox forward. The unexpected push mercifully jostled him out of his thoughts again, and he flashed the big man a grateful smile neither of them quite understood. _Don't I want to remember Cosmo_? _I'm supposed to, after all_. _It was my fault_. "Do foxes have a thing for binders? If you're going into the cabin you'd better start moving, or I could just change our terms and tell the men to look away instead."

If Tails had been blushing before it must have been visible through his white cheek fur after that comment. "No, sir! No, sorry, I'm just thinking about...something." _Me and Cosmo –_ _I'd never –_ _besides, I only know what he's talking about because Rouge always brings it up_! _Ever since that silly battle festival_...

"I hope you both enjoyed it," the sergeant replied with a low chuckle. _He thinks he's joking, Tails_. _Don't blame him for not knowing what you_ really _did to her_. "Come on, then, fox." He placed a hand on Tails's shoulder, once again reminding the fox of Sonic's touch past the jagged weight of the armor. _Why do they put strips of armor on their people's_ palms? _Their designer really must have something wrong upstairs_. Tails's natural curiosity – and rationality – momentarily outweighed his moodiness. Then he let the man steer him towards the hatch.

To his surprise – and, judging from the noise over his shoulder, the sergeant's as well – the door hissed open before they even came up next to it. "I heard you talking. Should I start making wedding plans for you two, Davizen?" The voice had that same aristocratic drawl as the major's had, but was as light and upbeat as Sonic's.

"And people wonder why you're still an ensign, Quinn," the sergeant grumbled back, but even through the filtering Tails could hear the laughter in his voice.

"They do?" the pilot asked in a tone of genuine surprise, spinning his high padded chair around to face them. He had a sharp, severe aspect torn apart by an ear-to-ear grin that came together in a face that would have been terrifying if the man's voice hadn't been so disarming. "I thought I'd made it obvious, myself. Do you think I should try harder?" he asked Tails directly, light brown eyes meeting the fox's blue ones.

For a moment Tails could only blink. Then he shook his head. "No, no, I think you're doing great as far as irreverence goes." _Sonic never quite figured out that word_. _Then again, maybe he did and just took it as a complement anyway –_ _that sounds more like him_.

"Told you so, sergeant." Quinn stretched his smile even wider somehow. "What is it, Storm Commando Ninety-Five now?"

Tails let their conversation fade into the background as he looked around the cockpit at last. There were three other chairs, all of them empty for whatever reason. _Maybe just not worth it to take one fox and a few soldiers to this Kessel place_. The monitors that loomed out from each of the control consoles were all grey and lifeless – he couldn't see through Quinn to see the main one, though – and the controls themselves were labeled in a script that Tails couldn't make out. _Couldn't all be easy, could it_? _That's weird, though, since we all speak the same language_. A question for another time.

And that brought him to the big sunglass-polarized canopy that surrounded them. The stars shone bright and clear around here, and although the constellations – if there even were any – were foreign it was just a relief to see natural light again. Two stubby round ends of a ruddy asteroid loomed ahead of them. "Is that Kessel, then?" he asked to no one in particular.

"That it is," Quinn answered promptly. "Well, one of the two, anyway. Big asteroids rich in crystals that can be processed into half the pharmaceuticals in the galaxy, with silica spiders that get you the other half."

"Careful what you tell him, Quinn," the sergeant – Davizen, was it – muttered.

The pilot just tossed his head. "Wardens'll tell him soon enough anyway. Besides, only people who don't know what Kessel is are the ones who don't know what Kessel _is_."

The sergeant growled something Tails and Quinn both pretended not to hear. _Good thing Cream isn't here_. _Her mother would kill me if she thought I exposed her to that kind of language_. The fox smiled a little despite himself. Vanilla the Rabbit really would have been more concerned about people swearing in front of her little daughter than either of them being imprisoned by armed soldiers on a mining colony. After all, they'd both been through situations not too different in the past anyway. _Wonder if Eggman took lessons from these guys_. _Or maybe the other way around_.

"I see you're easily distracted, fox," Quinn said. Tails shook off his thoughts and looked the grey-suited man in the eye again. "That's why the commander won't let me have a copilot myself. I'd talk all the way through the flight and buzz through a star or something on the way there."

"Does hyperdrive let you do that?" Tails asked. He got a strange look from the pilot and a tightened grip from the soldier in reply. _Work harder, Davizen_. _You're not even going to leave a bruise, and that's with the armor_! _Wait, why am I egging him on_?

Quinn eventually gave him a reply, but his tone was a little more guarded this time. "I thought you came in on your own – figured since they didn't send any other shuttles and you're the only one here –"

"You think too much," the sergeant warned him. Quinn swallowed heavily.

"Always my problem, never yours," he shot back as lightly as he could manage after a challenge like that. "Anyway, I guess your tech's a little different if that's even a possibility to you. No, we're out of trouble unless our calculations are off, in which case we can pop back into realspace pretty much anywhere. One of the reasons the Maw is such a thrill ride for smugglers and yet so dull a post for patrol ships like ours."

Tails couldn't see Davizen but he still felt the man's subtle nod behind them. A little tickle at the tips of his ears, maybe. Regardless, he felt certain there was something false in the pilot's answer, something he'd carefully kept concealed. Not that he had any clue what or how it affected him, of course. _Thanks for giving me something else to think about, though_ , the fox thought very sincerely at Quinn. The man's bizarre grin was back to full stretch; whether he'd done that deliberately to take Tails's mind off of things or to cover his own tails against official retribution – or both – he clearly knew exactly what he was doing.

"All right, you've had your little tour. Sorry it's just a glimpse, but we're out of time here," Quinn said after a moment as he spun his chair back around. "Control's going to call me up in just a few minutes and I don't think any of us want them to see a prisoner out here in the –"

A little buzz cut him off and it was his turn to swear, much less quietly than the sergeant had. Tails tried to cover his mouth as he giggled but only succeeded in pulling something in his left upper arm and throwing himself off balance. "Shuttle _Condor_ , this is Kessel Control," a bored-sounding man said from somewhere to Quinn's right. Tails could see a blue-white light glowing from that same area and wondered what was behind the pilot. "Confirming receipt of one special package and five stormtroopers for a week's leave. Wait one," Tails did _not_ like the way the man's voice sharpened, "what in Death's name is _that_?"

Quinn chuckled nervously but Sergeant Davizen stepped forward and dragged Tails up with him. A little blue statue of a man, presumably the traffic-control officer they were talking to, blurred and fuzzed from a circular platform just below the pilot's eye level. "This is the package, control. I want no evidence of unusual treatment for him right up until he gets steered into the separate cells, understood?"

"Understood, sergeant," the man said dazedly. "May I ask what the prisoner is doing in a restricted area?"

The sergeant grunted something that might have been a chuckle. "Call it a last request. No need to report it; besides, we were just leaving."

The control officer sounded skeptical. "Of course, sergeant. Very well, _Condor_ , yours is Berth Eighty-Seven in Hangar Twenty-One. Transmitting weather and flight plans now." With a final blur the man blinked out of existence and Quinn sagged back in his chair.

"Well played, sergeant, well played. Hope it doesn't come home to roost for you, though."

Davizen grunted. "Too far above his pay grade. Besides, I've got the green armor now. Nobody lower than Moff who's not in my chain of command is going to do anything I might turn back around on them."

"Sounds like you know what you're doing for a change. Good to hear it, Davizen," Quinn replied far too airily for a man who'd been shivering in his seat less than a minute before.

The sergeant just snorted and guided his furry charge back out into the main cabin. The other troopers had gathered in a semicircle to listen in. "What're you people staring at?" Davizen thundered, causing Tails to duck his poor abused ears. "Strap in and get ready for landing!"

Tails did the same, wavering a little without the soldier's gauntlet to steady him. But he'd been tied up enough by Eggman and the other kids in Emerald Hill to know how to stay balanced with only two or four limbs free, and so his only problem now was the fact that he was minutes away from a long-term prison cell.

 _This is going to get interesting_.

* * *

From the harsh orange glare that filled the prison approach Tails's mind expected a blast of desert heat, but his body was shivering in an arctic canyon wind. _Right_. _Asteroid_. _Artificial atmosphere, which is why I'm a step away from hyperventilating here just trying to breathe_. _Not to mention freezing my tails off_. The sooner they got to the dull metal building that loomed out of the cliff ahead of them the better as far as the fox was concerned.

That clearly wasn't going to be for a while though, not judging by the sixteen white-armored soldiers and pair of flatbed trams just downslope from them. Or from the helmetless, greying man charging up the hill past them his face just as craggy as their surroundings and much more severe.

"This is it?" he growled at the sergeant.

"This is him," Davizen confirmed, placing a subtle but unmistakable emphasis on the pronoun.

"Not much, is it? Twenty kilos, maybe? Forget spiders or rockfalls, the other prisoners are going to tear it apart long before."

The sergeant straightened. "Unrest, Warden?"

Another growl. "Hardly. The men haven't had weapons-free in almost three months standard."

Davizen whistled, or at least Tails assumed he did behind the rattling buzz that his speakers gave off. "I'm actually impressed, Warden."

"I'm glad," the old man replied in a tone drier than the wind flaying the canyon. "Take your people on the left train. The rug's coming with us on the right. Make sure it knows that."

Tails bristled but the sergeant placed a hand across his furry chest before he could open his mouth. "He's fully sapient, Warden. And he understands and speaks Basic fluently, although we haven't tested literacy yet. Command likes it when your prisoners at least get to the first transfer block alive, you know."

The warden sighed heavily. "Command can like whatever they want, but I can only deliver based on what they actually give me. Which in this case clearly isn't much. All right then, follow me."

The next three minutes or so were some of the less pleasant in Tails's ten-year life. Black holes were intense and shooting his girlfriend still hurt, but flying at what felt like transsonic speeds on an open-topped platform into the teeth of a sub-zero sandstorm was a new experience in pain. But finally the tram ducked into an oily dark hangar of its own and one of the troopers yanked the dazed fox off the platform by his tail-cuffs. His heels skidded backwards through the not-quite-familiar thickness of motor oil, a sensation almost every part of his body _but_ his hands and feet knew. And then the floodlights flared back to life and illuminated a red-rock corridor, and the worst of the transit was over.

For a certain definition of worst. There was a fork in the tunnel ahead and the soldiers shunted the bound fox down the wider left passage. For whatever reason they refused to follow him, though, so he squared his shoulders and forged ahead into the darkness. And then suddenly it wasn't dark anymore, not really, and the startled kit whipped around to see a pulsing blue-white barrier across the hall behind him. As he stared at it a strange vibration filled the corridor, setting his fur drifting as it eased out dust and debris from the trip. Unfortunately, it also set his jaw trembling through his ears no matter how far down he tucked them or how hard he ground his hands into them.

At least the audio barrage was short, and he could close his eyes against the light show that followed. White, red, and blacklight-purple rippled across the dark brown walls, and it was the last color that finally tipped Tails off. _Ah, well, if scanning me makes them feel better they might as well do it_ , he thought with a sigh as he remembered Earth's airport security. _Besides, if worst comes to worst, what's another mutation on top of what I've got_? He tried to swish his tails out in front of him, nearly overbalanced, and dusted himself down ostentatiously instead in his best "I meant to do that" act. Nothing followed the deep scan, so after a moment he made his way further into the darkened hallway ahead until the soldiers swung back out to surround him once more.

As Tails was marched further down the hallway they started to pass blue-white barriers like the one in the capital ship's hangar, and inside each were between four and two _dozen_ prisoners. At least, he assumed they were prisoners, they wore ragged jumpsuits without the armor or uniformity of the guards and clearly came from a wide range of species. He felt his fur stand on end as more and more eyes turned to his escort. There was anger in those looks, and not all of it was aimed at the soldiers. Anger and desperation and fear and, most unsettling of all, hunger. He wasn't sure if it was the ones who looked like they might actually eat him or the other type that unnerved him worst, but he screwed his eyes shut and just trotted along with the column as best he could.

Things came to a head when they came to their first halt. The intersections to a cross-corridor were themselves walled in by other shields, which Tails started to look at in more detail in the absence of other things to do. Little cylinders protruded from the ceiling and floor, with the shield running tangential to the inner edges of each. _Only people outside the shields can bring them down at all, I guess_. _Clever_. The warden was doing just that when a ripping snarl echoed through the halls. Something with far too many eyes and even more fur than Tails hurled itself at one of the prison doors, fanged mouth wide open. The fox winced at the harsh electric discharge that roared back at it and threw it to the ground, but despite the impact the creature stood up again and charged once more. It came again and again even as spots in its fur started to smolder, and when Tails started backing away he realized that the troopers around him had already ducked past him instead. His tails wound and unwound nervously around the cuffs, nearly tripping him more than once, and then he smacked one of the soldiers' helmets by mistake and the man shoved him the rest of the way down in reply.

"Oh, for Sith's sake, shoot it!" the warden growled. Suiting the action to the word, he unholstered a skeletal-looking pistol, looked longingly at a dial just above the grip, and fired straight at the berserk prisoner. A blue lightning bolt crackled from the gun to the victim, a faint cone rippling around it as well, and finally the big furry creature lay still. "Idiot Talz don't know when they're beaten." _Energy weapons_? _Good to know_. _Guess it's better than bullets_. _Or hedgehogs_. He wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the memories that thought brought with it.

He settled for watching the Imperials at work instead. One of the troopers hustled forward, checking the shield generator closest to the enraged creature. "It almost wasn't, Commander. Another few swings and the shocks would have overloaded the shields instead."

The warden shook his head angrily, by now leaving Tails with the impression that he made few movements that _weren't_ angry. "Just for that he's our decoy. Lower the shields. The rest of you, cover them. Eighteen-Eighty-Four and Twenty-Eighty-Nine, bring the Talz."

The designated troopers scurried forward, hefting the mammoth creature with significant difficulty. Tails gave them the most sympathetic grin he could muster from his spot on the ground before the man behind him hoisted him back up by his cuffs again. But once the convoy and its new member were moving again, he had something to ask.

"Sir," he spoke up diffidently, "did you...kill that, uh, Talz?"

"No such luck," the warden replied laconically. "Just a stun shot. And the shield was in the way."

Tails's mind was racing. "So you can shoot someone and be sure it won't kill them? That's –"

The warden didn't even bother looking back at him. "I could take you apart three different ways just with this blaster, and the rifles have even more. I could hit you with an AT bolt, a meter of energized Tibanna gas that'd give you maybe a quarter-second to realize you were dead before it ripped your guts out and packed them into the man behind you. Or since you're standing around naked," Tails looked down at his furry feet in embarrassment, "I suppose I could save on energy and just fire off a few lighter blasts. Each one's an orb of plasma traveling just under light-speed, and each one explodes when it hits something solid enough to be worth killing. That's got me wondering how your fur smells while it burns, actually." Tails looked frantically around, trying to keep his balance on the harsh gritty floor with his arms and tails behind his back. The other soldiers were watching impassively, clearly used to this speech or others like it. "Probably not something I want to find out, although I wouldn't mind at least watching it happen." _Okay, calm down, Tails_. _You've already smelled that a few times before_ – a long scar along his right side twinged in memory – _and he's right, he doesn't want to_. "But since Command can be so fussy about things like that I've got this locked on stun. So you're lucky. The worst I get to do to you is bypass the gas cell and just pump your nervous system full of electricity. People always scream for a few minutes when they wake up but it doesn't do anything the med-probes can't put back together."

 _Okay, I get it_. _You didn't have to give me that whole performance_ , Tails thought as he tried to put a plug in his building hysteria. All the same he appreciated the information. There were quite a few things one could do with a gun that made lightning strikes on demand, and knowing it was nonlethal meant he might actually be willing to get behind a trigger if he had to. Maybe. "Thank you, Warden," he said after a minute, his voice still a little more shaken than his mind was.

"Good, you know the right answer already," the man replied in that sun-dry voice. "Now keep moving, all of you. We need to be two junctions up before the Talz knows what's going on."

By the time they actually left the first intersection, though, six soldiers had broken off from the pack to cover the weakened shield and two more had dropped back to help their comrades cover the Talz. That left Tails with only eight guards and the warden. _Heh_. " _Only_." Despite the changes there was nothing remarkable about the rest of the walk, just more and more shielded caverns he refused to look into and an increasingly rough floor he bruised his toes and gashed his pads against. He never cried out, though; the last thing he needed to to down here was make the only people who might protect him think he was a crybaby. He heard someone behind one of the shields – he hoped – mutter something about "a nice piece of tail" as he passed and hoped it was a bad joke. Rouge had explained the other meaning to him after it showed up on an old movie back on Earth and he'd promptly gone red in the face, something that happened most of the time the bat was around.

Finally, though, they came to the third junction. Tails let himself look around again as he shifted from foot to foot to take the pressure off some of his injuries – _my fault for letting my feet get soft like this; I'd never have noticed back in Emerald Hill_. _Still, the shoes were gifts from Sonic_. _I_ had _to use them_! There were no cells in sight anymore and this time there were only two corridors instead of three, one stretching out in front of them and the other branching off to the left. Actually, the bit about the cells wasn't quite true, the fox realized as the doors made their booming crack and shut down. There were several further down the hall ahead of him, barriers wanly lighting an otherwise pitch-dark hallway. The other wing didn't even have that much. Tails shivered uncontrollably as the convoy moved out into the intersection.

"Drop the Talz past the door and seal it," the warden snarled at his troops. The fox relaxed immensely as the big furry alien was hurled bodily down the black corridor and locked off, only to feel tears bead up as he realized what he'd just thought. _You'd condemn someone to...to_ that _when you could go instead_? _At least if it's you you'd know what was happening_. _You'd probably mess things up and in here that probably means you'd die, but it's better than wishing that someone_ else _would so that_ you _don't have to_.

 _Besides, I've already done that once_.

The warden saw to Tails personally, dragging him backwards down the hall and exposing the kit's bare heels to even more abuse than the rest of his feet had taken. This time the fox couldn't help it. He yipped his pain and confusion and earned a sharp rap from the man's armored knuckle. _Not as good as Knuckles though_ , he thought somewhat deliriously as the warden paused to look over the six cells in the little cavern. All of the ones Tails could see were occupied by at least one person, generally three. "Right, in here." The warden slammed a metal spike into a slot in the generator in question and after chirping for a moment the barrier wooshed away. He shoved the fox in and Tails pitched forward over his cracked and stubbed toes with a wail, landing hard on his face without his hands or tails to check the fall.

The shield crackled to life behind him almost immediately and with a whimper the fox pulled himself up into the closest thing he could manage to a comfortable ball. Red dust stained his fur from head to toe, caking most of it into little knots, and his bangs sagged across his face as he kicked his way into his new den. At least he could see his single cellmate now, sleeping on a low metal table just next to him. _So much for cushions and a library_. The man looked young, with a smooth round face and black hair that wanly reflected the shield's glow. The orange jumpsuit the man was stuck in was thicker than it had looked from outside the cells; it was so thick, in fact, that Tails couldn't tell whether or not the other prisoner was even breathing.

 _Well, I'm here_. _Now to see how to get_ out.

But there were perks to being clever enough that your friends called you a genius. Tails already had a few ideas buzzing through his head, and for the first time in more than a month the first things he saw in his dream were not wood and water and death. No, in dreams he'd exhausted even longer ago there were now rock and metal and blazing energy – the start of a new design.


	3. Chapter 3

Tails woke up shivering. Not from any dream – Cosmo again by the end of it, of course – he was used to those. No, he was shivering because it was just so insanely _cold_. He tried to pull his nose out of his chest but couldn't. Even if he'd really wanted to expose himself any further his back and neck were just too stiff. No, better to just rock back under his blanket and – _wait_. _What blanket_?

The foreign weight was enough of a curiosity to drag the fox out of bed regardless. It was a thick orange jumpsuit a little shorter than he was, the same sort of thing the other prisoners had been wearing. _Well, not the Talz, but until thirty seconds ago I'd have thought he had enough fur on his own_. Still no shoes or gloves anywhere to be seen though, which was odd considering he could have sworn his cellmate had both. And speaking of gloves, Tails realized only when he tried to uncurl yet again that his hands were tucked deep into his belly fur. _So that means he_ –

"I was wondering when you'd wake up." The human's voice was light and pleasant enough. In fact, it was about as close to accentless as the fox could imagine. His tone was just as flat as his accent, but Tails had heard a few creepily emotionless voices before and this wasn't one of them. No, the human definitely sounded friendly, just...quiet. Not quite that either, but until a better word came along that was what Tails was going to go with. "This is the first time our hosts have been gracious enough to give me company. Maybe they've just been waiting for the right person to happen by."

"How long have you been waiting, sir?" Tails asked hesitantly. Only part of his stutter came from nerves, the rest was all because of the accursed chill. Still, he had to look ridiculous, a pair of too-big pointed ears and similarly scaled eyes poking out of an orange backdrop. _Is he laughing, Tails_?

"No need to 'sir' me in here, little guy," the man said. His voice was still pleasant but it didn't hold the laughter Sonic's would have. _How long has he been in here to silence him like this_? "I haven't seen one of my fliers in almost two weeks standard. Judging by the meal schedule, that is, since it's not like there's sunlight down here. Speaking of titles, my name's Wedge."

Tails took advantage of his fresh mobility to blot out his giggle with a bare paw. The movement was slow and arthritic, but at least he didn't have the cuffs on anymore. _And I thought_ I _had it bad with the "miles per hour" thing_. "Call me Tails. Thanks for tucking me in, by the way."

The man nodded. "Saw where you got that name from when I did, too. As awkward names go, at least yours actually makes sense."

"Thanks, I think." Tails rocked himself a little closer to upright while every muscle in his torso whined in protest. His eyes were finally starting to adapt to the shield's eerie glow that pushed just far enough into the cave-gloom he couldn't quite call things dark. Wedge had dark brown hair, not black like he'd originally thought, and it was kept in what had probably been a style as neat and nondescript as the man himself before the grit invaded it. And he did indeed have black gloves and slippers on, articles the fox would very much like for himself. "When they brought in my suit did they bring any gloves with it?"

Wedge squinted at him from across the meter or so between them. "Not that I noticed, no. To be honest, if this is like some of the other prisons I've seen it's actually a little surprising that they'd give a furry alien anything in the first place."

Tails frowned. At least his face wasn't as stiff as the rest of him! "Weird. You've been in here before, Wedge?"

"Not as a prisoner. Not as a guard either, if that's what you're wondering," he added quickly before the thought could even cross Tails's mind. "No, this is the kind of treatment you get when you've cracked open half a dozen other prisons and made yourself too important to just shoot while escaping or something. To be honest I've expected that to happen ever since I arrived."

"You're a...well, tell me, then. You're fighting an empire, but I could think of half a dozen words and none of them might fit anyway."

"Call us Rebels," Wedge told him, putting just enough emphasis on the word that Tails spotted the capital letter. "I'm one of the runaways from Yavin Base – not that whoever's checking our microphone doesn't know that already – which means that even if they didn't know my name I'd already be kind of a special case. We blew up their biggest, spendiest superweapon, you see."

That wasn't too impressive considering Eggman's repertoire, but something else stood out. "Rogue _Squadron_ ," Tails repeated. Blue eyes went wide. "You're a flier?" he asked breathlessly.

Wedge nodded crisply. "That I am. Handled snubfighters and a few of my parents' freighters most of my life. Just snubs now though," he said a little more softly.

That brought Tails the rest of the way upright despite his aches. "Me too!" he squealed, eyes bright despite the gloom. "Well, er, not exactly – I mean, I only fly into combat when I really have to, I guess, but I've worked Sonic's plane since I was four and –"

"How long does that give you then?" Wedge asked. There was definitely an edge of curiosity in his voice now, and the fact that it was an _edge_ made Tails pause for just a second.

"Six years, give or take," he said proudly.

The man's nostrils flared. "What is a blasted ten-year-old doing in Imperial super-maximum security on Kessel? I've heard they keep inmates' kids in the mines too, but you're not obviously not one of them." His tone was still level, still reserved, but there'd been a pulse of anger Tails would have had to have been deaf to miss. And the fox was feeling a surge of his own.

"Inmates' kids? What kind of place _is_ this?" the fox demanded.

"Exactly what it sounds like," Wedge replied immediately. "If we could've scraped up the transports to come after it we'd have cracked Kessel wide open months ago. Literally, if we had to."

"You could do that?" The wonder was back in Tails's voice. "You Rebels would actually be able to get everyone out?"

The other pilot hesitated. "No idea," he replied after a minute. "I'd like to think we couldv'e – I _really_ like to think that we _will_ , although that might just be because I'm stuck here now," Tails had no idea how the man kept his voice so light and his face so clear even as what he said – and didn't – carried his meanings across. "No one group of rebels knows what the whole Alliance is like at any one time. My squadron's got its command ships, support staff, fighters, and a few transports, plus whatever we get to escort or rescue. Same for everyone else, I guess. That's why Yavin hit my squadmates so hard back when we were Red Group, but it's also why even a loss there wouldn't have wiped us all out."

Tails sat back on his namesakes for a moment and processed what Wedge had just said. And what he hadn't. "That has to be the vaguest bunch of specifics I've ever heard."

"You noticed?" Wedge was definitely smiling now, a broad grin that looked as out of place on his circular face as it had on Quinn's triangular one. "Guess I need to practice then."

"No, no, you're fine," Tails bobbed one tail to reassure him. "Sure, I guessed they were there but that doesn't actually give me anything to go on."

"Well, that's a relief." The smile had eased a little, looking a bit more natural. _Now_ that's _something I bet he hasn't practiced in a while_. "The Commander would kill me if I told the Imps more than they already knew, and he'd only do it so Princess Leia or General Reikan couldn't drag it out."

"So, uh, I guess you know a lot, then, Wedge? I won't ask," Tails assured him quickly, "but I kind of do want to know why you're in here."

The other pilot sighed. "I got careless. My squadron and one or two others went after the Imperial Enclave – that's an R&D base out on Kyle Five. Had to pick up a data dump from some hacked droids and then bomb whatever looked tempting Easy mission until about ten minutes in, then somebody got to an alarm panel and the interceptors showed up. They caught my Y-Wing in one of the canyons while I was trying to shake them, and here I am. Hope Janson's okay."

"Janson?" Tails would have been on the edge of his seat if the terrain permitted.

"My wingmate. Gunner, actually, since we were in the Y-Wing. I'm pretty sure Luke managed to pick him up, because otherwise I would have seen him on my way in here."

Tails nodded. "Must be hard trying not to get arrested."

That got an actual laugh from Wedge, although the hard bark barely qualified. "Not really. All you have to do is hold still long enough and that won't be a problem ever again."

The fox was still shivering against the cold but Wedge's almost joking statement sent a fresh chill sweeping through him. _Oh, Tails, what have you gotten yourself into_? "But they captured you, didn't they?" he pointed out almost desperately.

"I don't know if they recognized my squadron markings or if they were just desperate for leads. The only reason Wes and I stayed alive long enough to run for cover was because the Y-Wing is a tough model. That much interceptor fire would have torn our usual X-Wings apart."

The shuddering intensified, but there was something underlying it. Not fear, although there was plenty of that too. No, more like an adrenaline rush. More like _anticipation_. _Stop it, Tails_! _This isn't your fight. You need to get home to Sonic_.

Sonic. _The only people Sonic slows down for are friends and people in need_. _He doesn't let Eggman just walk away if he's plotting something and neither should I_! _After all, he trusted me to go out here on my own_. _He put up with me blaming_ him _for Cosmo's death and the least I can do is show him I can stand on my own_. _He needs the rest_.

Wedge was frowning at him. "Are you okay, Tails? I didn't mean to scare you too badly with –"

"How can I help?" Tails said bluntly. For a moment they just stared at each other, neither quite believing what they'd just heard. Then Tails said it again a little less automatically. "I want to help out. What can I do?"

"That wasn't meant to be a recruitment drive, Tails," Wedge said cautiously. "Besides, unless the Alliance does something ridiculous like send Rogue Squadron after me we're both going to sit this war out."

Tails's tails wove and knotted behind him while his feet tapped the chilly stone. "There's got to be something we can do," he muttered.

Something flashed across Wedge's plain features. "Why don't you try to find a more comfortable place to lie down? Even if all we do is keep each other sane from now on I don't want to see you writhing around again." Despite his level tone the pilot's request was clearly an order and Tails shrugged away the last of the jumpsuit and stood up. Then Wedge started gesturing at him and the fox stopped to watch. _Cupping his ear and pointing up_. _What the_... _wait_. _Of course, the Imperials are listening in_. _Good thinking_.

"All right, all right," Tails replied a little too casually, and Wedge nodded to confirm it. "Any thoughts?"

"I don't know how your species likes to sleep, but if you insist on the floor then the back of the cave should at least give you a little shelter whenever the air starts moving."

Tails nodded. _Good plan, both for the bug hunt and for actually sleeping later on_. _Although I've got a better idea on that front_. He started feeling his way along the walls of the cell, oddly grateful for his bare hands even as the pads on his palms and heels went numb. _It'd probably happen through the gloves too_. _At least this way I can feel anything odd even more easily_.

Like the little plastic grate smaller than his fingertip he managed to trace between a couple of protruding rocks just above ground level halfway back. "What –" he started, putting all the surprise he could feign into his voice. "Looks like you were right, Wedge, the Imperials really are spying on us." He fought his arthritic joints to wedge his stubby claws into the seam around the microphone grate, twisting and straining until finally the little machine gave way and popped out of its socket, trailing a length of cable behind it. "That's going to give someone a headache," he said much more proudly than he actually felt. He'd been on the receiving end of feedback squeals before and didn't enjoy the thought that he had probably just inflicted them on a dutiful guard he didn't even know.

He felt a wonderfully warm presence over his shoulder a second later as Wedge eased himself off the shelf and rolled to his feet behind the fox. "There's no way that's the last one," he muttered as quietly as he could from as close to the freshly-made hole as he could manage.

"Of course not," Tails whispered back the same way. "I'll keep looking."

"Hurry. Someone'll be down to check on the noise very soon. If you can, hold off on destroying the others. Better we leave them with one or two." With that Wedge hopped back up on his so-called bed, leaving the fox's back even colder than before. Teeth chattering, Tails went back to his painstaking exploration of the cavern wall. The other pilot started talking again behind him. "Well, I hope you find a good place to nest back there, since we're probably going to be in this place for a while. If the squadron gets too sentimental for its own good and breaks us out, though, do you really think you're up for joining the Alliance?"

 _He's giving you an out_. _Take it, you crazy fox_! "The only cold feet I've got are literal, Wedge," Tails replied gravely.

"Look, I don't know where you come from but you might not go back for years unless you get a mission there. Seriously, kid, think it over. The only reason I'm even offering is because you seem too mature for me to believe you're barely ten."

 _He doesn't want you with him, Tails_. _He doesn't want you slowing him down_. _And do you really want to get him or his friends killed just like you did Cosmo and then pin it all on whoever's left like you did to Sonic_? _Tails,_ think _for a change_.

 _But I_ am _thinking_. "I promise I won't let you down!" he said too quickly for even his own brain to invent another objection. _Besides, that's what this all boils down to_. _I failed as a commander, but if I get to be a pilot or an engineer I might be able to really help out this time_. And just like that, his frozen pads scraped the surface of another microphone grate. Like Wedge had asked, though, he left it where it was and instead scraped a little arrow in the dust with an almost rigid index finger. _This cold is going to kill me too fast for it to matter anyway_.

 _Well, since it hasn't, Tails, you should get back to work_. With a heavy sigh he moved on along the wall. "Not as good back here as you thought it would be," he called over his shoulder for the benefit of their cover story. Well, that and to set up his own much less grand plan. _Wedge leaning over my shoulder like that pretty much ensured I'd do it anyway_. _A little awkward, I guess, but it's not like I don't do the same thing for Sonic or Cream or –_ _or Cosmo_ , _yeah, I guess I did_. "I'll check around the bed – do you mind moving a little and letting me in?"

The human obliged, and after another few minutes of scrabbling Tails dug up a third listening device underneath the shelf. _Hard to believe it's almost warm, although I guess Wedge has been on it all day_. Since they were both up, they rallied around the first microphone to work out what to do. "Think I got them all," Tails whispered. Even through the cold, there was an electric thrill to this whole spy game that had him as awake and alive as he'd been any other time he could remember.

"Maybe, but I'm not sure about the ceiling. I couldn't check up there on my own even if I wanted to, but if I give you a boost and we work in little spurts so nobody sees –"

Tails shook his head. "Duck under the bed and give me space. I'll take care of it." Wedge gave him a skeptical look but obliged, and the little fox wound up his namesakes and hopped into the air.

His rapidly twirling tails caught the icy air of their cell and pushed it down past him, propelling him straight up at the ceiling. Maintaining his balance up here was going to be a little awkward considering he needed to get his hands flush with the coarse rock, but he'd flown in even smaller spaces than this before! All right, granted he'd been four years old and even more diminutive than he was now, but it was the thought that counted.

He flew a laborious circuit of the room just to be sure, but the only microphone he found up above was directly over the bed. He jabbed at it a few times with his thumb to let Wedge know and then let himself back down. In a space so tiny he hadn't really gotten the blood or adrenaline pumping that normally made flight so fun, but at least that meant he didn't have to come down from his euphoria either.

"All right," the other pilot hissed when Tails set down, "yank the other two at ground level and leave the one on the ceiling. If we're lucky they'll think we think we're in the clear." Even now that the fox knew where to look it was still hard to track down the little panels again through the overwhelming darkness, and that accursed barrier was still throwing off his night vision, but eventually the other two microphones came out of the wall. Wedge put an arm around Tails's shoulder as if to lead him towards the back of the cave once more, but then the odd pulsing light vanished. In its place came – _what else_ – floodlights dispelling the blackness with their harsh white glare and razor-tipped shadows. Then someone stepped into the chamber and blocked most of it out while Tails stood there blinking frantically.

"Alien, you're coming with me. Just for a short time, don't worry." The man's voice was young and pleasant enough, even turning the "alien" into just a placeholder title rather than the insult the other Imperials had made it. "Intelligence wants to know who and what you are so we're going to run a few tests. Fluids, genetics, microorganisms, that sort of thing. Nothing more harmful than a few needles, though, and we're only taking out, not putting in. Don't worry," he repeated.

 _Needles_? That was all Tails could process. His breath roared through his chest, echoing louder in his ears than his tailspin ever could. Wedge placed a protective arm across the kit. _Just like Sonic_... "Hold up. There are standards for prisoners of war even on this dustball. You'll have to go through me to take him, understood?"

The man in front of them raised his hands in placation, which would have been a little more comforting if it didn't let spurts of floodlight directly into Tails's eyes. "Please, Master Antilles. He'll be kept sedated the entire time – here," he produced something that glinted dully in the light. _Don't worry about the drug_ , Tails thought woozily, _I'll pass out just fine from thinking about it_. "You have my word as a medical officer he'll return to you safely. Sleepily, but safely."

Wedge lowered his arm a fraction. "I'll hold you to that, officer. You've taken the sadism chips out of your medical droids since I went in for _my_ physical, right?"

The man swallowed visibly, an impressive feat considering the overwhelming backlighting. "We're still looking into it, Master Antilles." He leaned in close, voice hushed. "I think it's the warden's idea of a prank." He seemed so earnest that Tails longed to tell him only one of the microphones was left, that he could speak almost freely. But the less the man knew the healthier it would probably be for all of them. _Goes against the grain not to share knowledge, though_.

Wedge sighed and sagged against the wall. "All right, take him. Not as if I could realistically stop you anyway. But if you bend my cellmate and he doesn't bend back, I will find a way to make you and the warden remember it."

Another nervous swallow and a quick head-bob. "Don't worry. Now, alien, please step forward. There is some risk to this part of the process since we don't know your physiology yet, I'm afraid, so until we've synthesized a working sedative we're going to have to knock you out the old-fashioned way." Too late Tails realized that the glinting cylinder wasn't a syringe, and then there was a bright blue flash and nothing but a world of pain.

* * *

The first thing Tails noticed when he woke up was the harsh dry grit in his throat, which seemed odd since he could feel some deliciously cold liquid in there too. Maybe he'd been too loud? He certainly hadn't had anyone to talk to between Sonic and Wedge, so he might have just burned himself out. But as the rest of his senses swam back he realized that wasn't quite right. Yes, he'd burned out his voice, but it wasn't from talking.

"Easy, Tails, easy," the friendly monotone told him as he kicked and pitched and screamed on the flat metal slab. "Stun bolts aren't pleasant."

"Understatement of the century," the fox grumbled between pants and groans. At least the wildfire in his fingers and toes had finally gone out, but as the arid cold of the caves gushed in to replace it he wasn't sure which he'd preferred. "How," he asked finally as his lungs got back to normal, "do I look?"

"Probably as tired as I feel," Wedge answered promptly. "Still, I guess that medic honored his word. You've got a couple of damp spots – both elbows and right shoulder – which match up with a blood draw. If they yanked out any fur I couldn't tell you."

Tails shook his head, mashing his ears against the slab. "I shed enough anyway they probably didn't need to."

"At least it sounds like you've recovered well enough." His voice dropped mischievously, probably to a level just low enough to spoof the last microphone. "I was going to show you something when they showed up, but I'd better let you just lie down until you're ready. They brought lunch back with you anyway."

 _That_ got Tails moving. "What kind of lunch? I don't smell anything."

Wedge chuckled a little. "If you did I'd be more worried. They've taken standard emergency rations and engineered the taste out of them for us. Which is odd, because normally they don't do prisoners favors."

Tails laughed, but the laughter devolved into a coughing fit as it caught at the back of his mouth. "Sorry, sorry. I'll be fine."

"Why do I get the feeling I'll be hearing that a lot out of you?" Wedge said.

 _Because you have good instincts_. "Well, pass the tray up here and I'll choke them down."

A handful of plastic-wrapped cubes that together were a little smaller than the fox's hand landed softly in his belly fur. "No trays. Too easy to turn them into weapons, I guess, not that they'd matter against the shield system. I was surprised they didn't take your binders off when they kicked you in here, and I have a feeling they'd have punished both of us if I hadn't handed them over. Speaking of which, whose idea was it to lock up your tails back there?"

"Mine," Tails muttered. _Not exactly a point of pride now, is it_? "Figured I'd last a bit longer if I cooperated than I would if I tried a one-fox jailbreak with my tails free."

Wedge cocked his head, considering. "Probably for the best. That said," he practically subvocalized, "it wouldn't just be one...fox, not anymore." Tails had just reached down to pick up one of the ration cubes when something much colder and heavier rapped his wrist. "We've got a friend somewhere in the base. Maybe several. This holdout blaster was folded up in your jumpsuit."

"Holdout blaster?" Tails asked just as softly. Wedge had leaned over like he was about to smother the fox's cry, but since Tails had actually remembered the microphones he rocked back a little with a pleasantly surprised expression.

"Small enough to hide it, basically. Only has one setting, but against trooper armor that's all we need."

"These are...actually pretty good," Tails said aloud for the benefit of whatever poor soul had to listen in on them. He could actually _try_ a ration cube later – hopefully very soon, considering the way his stomach sloshed and rumbled periodically – but right now the technology right over his hand was far more important. "Could it get through the shields?"

Wedge closed his eyes. "No. If they lower them, though, we can take out a couple of troopers and grab their rifles. Those might have enough punch to at least wear them down."

"We wouldn't have anywhere to go, would we?" Tails asked. His voice came back up a little, but there was a sad resignation in it that kept it safely hushed. "We'd have to cut through dozens of soldiers, watch out for the prisoners, and then just hope that there's a shuttle."

"Well, you certainly wolfed those down," Wedge said aloud. "I figure you ought to get some real sleep soon, since stuns definitely don't count. Did you find somewhere a little healthier?"

Tails rolled himself into the tightest ball he could manage at the head of the bed. "Sure did." He patted the slab with one tail, laying the other one over the old burn scar on his side. "Hop up. I can be your pillow; it'll keep us both warm and should be way better for your neck."

Wedge squinted at him, but recognized the intransigence in Tails's blue eyes and gave in gracefully. His head was a little sharper than Cream's and nowhere near as familiar as Sonic's; besides, Tails was still too _hungry_ to just fall asleep like that. Instead of dozing off, then, the little fox leafed through the thick web of fur that had snagged the ration cubes when he moved, tugging the little concoctions out one at a time and sampling them. _Yeesh, these really are completely flavorless_. _Wonder how they managed that –_ _even back when she was still learning, Cream's stuff was at least distinctive_!

As long as the meal wasn't going to be too distracting – and since the wrappers apparently were part of the food that was definitely the case – there was a little food for the mind tucked away nearby. He'd had his eyes closed when Wedge stowed the pistol but there were only so many places he could have put it, and a little scrounging with his free tail found the grip and tugged it out from a little cairn of loose rocks under the bed. He squirmed around until he was facing completely outwards, moving his tail blanket out to Wedge's chest as a consolation, and began fiddling with the miniature weapon.

 _Small enough to hide_ – I _could probably use this thing_! The thought wasn't even remotely comforting, not after the Metarex, not after Cosmo. The last thing Tails needed was some other innocent person – even if they were shooting at him too he had no reason to assume they were evil – downrange from him. _Let's see if I can figure out how this works, at least, though_. But the ribbed metal refused to pull apart and after many fruitless minutes the frustrated kit felt hot tears building. _If I hadn't let them steal Sonic's screwdriver I'd be able to do this_.

 _See, you're helpless without him_. _At least he_ tried _to save Cosmo. You just shot her and watched him actually do his best_. _Now do you understand why he wanted you to leave_? _You're only locked up here because you were too useless for him to put up with anymore, and that's why you're going to_ stay _locked up unless Wedge pulls you out_.

He couldn't stand against the tidal wave of thoughts, even as some tiny rational part of his mind screamed that he wasn't being fair. The tears came fast and free for a few seconds before drying up entirely, and raw dry eyes burned as he strained against the darkness around and inside him. Then something landed between his ears. Something warm and soft, something that didn't quite know where to scratch or how to press in but seemed determined to try, and as it explored his scalp Tails felt some of the pain fade.

"Been a while since I've seen a domestic animal," Wedge said drowsily, "but I think I remember this calming down the neighbor's pet. Hope the idea's the same here." His hand cupped Tails's skull and kept massaging until the kit finally gave in and stopped trying to sob.

"I hope you don't do this to all of your pilots," he said instead, managing a halfhearted little giggle.

"No, not usually. Of course, most of them would blast me if I tried, but from what I've seen two-thirds of them could probably use it. Including my CO half the time. I don't care what your problems are; if you want to hold them in it's your choice. But I might as well stop you from going to pieces anyway. Besides, you're thinking so much my hand's actually starting to warm up."

Tails didn't answer, just squirmed into the amateur touch and tucked the pistol back below the bench with his tail. There would be time for all that later. After all, what did they have but time?


	4. Chapter 4

It didn't take very long for Tails and his cellmate to find a comfortable routine – well, as comfortable as they were going to get in a Kessel prison cell, at least. The guards opened the top-right quarter of the shield to drop in food three times a day, at least according to what little remained of the fox's internal clock after so long away from home, and Wedge set aside about fifteen minutes in the middle of each break to try to convince Tails to pick up the holdout blaster. Other than that, they basically just talked and slept, using the time to dream about life with the Rebel Alliance.

And then there were the medical probes. The doctors still kept Tails unconscious for each of them, once every six feedings, although at least they'd only needed to shock him one more time before they got the anesthetic right. Each time he came back with the same set of holes, maybe a little wider, plus extra patches in his coat and a few aches in his tails. And sometimes there was a weird slithering pressure against his temples that made him think the medic had gone back on his promise not to inject the fox with anything more than the knockout drug. With no hard evidence, though, it was easier for him to just put it down to nerves and be grateful for the basic grooming they gave him each time too. _Probably makes it easier on Wedge too_ , _since I'm not sure which of us is oilier right now_. _Get me back in a machine shop and I'll totally take home the crown though_.

On the subject of hygiene, it hadn't taken long for the normally apathetic kit to come up with a proper use for his jumpsuit. He'd developed a tradition of ducking bathings and groomings while he was growing up with Sonic and the hedgehog usually hadn't had any problem using him for a pillow anyway, and he'd tried to tug the orange fabric on exactly once to humor Wedge and given up in seconds. It pulled his fur flat in the wrong direction, itched like mad, didn't even have a slit for his tails, and simply wasn't his color, so wearing the silly thing wasn't really in the cards. It did, however, make for an excellent tablecloth, which made life easier not only for the two prisoners but also for the poor quartet of guards who brought them their food. Tails had also taken to tucking it under his side and flipping it up as a shelter whenever they slept. The human kept his head and chest warm while the cloth did a vaguely passable job of protecting his back and legs. Not remarkable, but better than freezing his tails off had been!

Still, even with another flier to talk to there was only so much to say, especially once they'd both worn out their voices within the first three or four meals. That left Tails with far too much time on his hands, a situation only made worse by the way his brain refused to dream and insisted on thinking. Cosmo wasn't just haunting his dreams anymore, she'd made it out into his conscious stream of thought too.

So it was a very morose fox that shook himself awake once again for Wedge's little firearms-awareness speech. Only this time, probably the thirtieth so far, it was a little different.

"Is your planet really that peaceful, Tails?" Wedge asked quietly. Tails felt the strangeness in the situation, the almost silent voices belying the scorn that was sure to follow. "You won't even use the gun in self-defense?"

"But it wouldn't be," Tails pointed out. "I'd be breaking out. They're supposed to keep me in here, so where in that do they deserve to d – to get shot?"

"You could just say the word," Wedge hissed at him. "It isn't like I'll think any less of you for it." _Probably because your opinion's already at rock bottom_.

But there was a little more to it than that. A technicality, but still. "There's still the stun setting. Not on this gun, you've told me, but just in general. And I'm going to wire up mine like that as soon as I get the chance. Still hope I never have to use them because that thing hurts, though."

Wedge's eyes widened fractionally, a motion Tails would never have noticed if he hadn't been locked in this gloom with the man for a week or more. "You really mean it. You just don't see things the way I do." Tails shook his head. "Look, I know that you're young. And whatever it is you see every night that makes you kick me awake, I'm fairly sure that gunfire was part of it. But when those walls go down it really will be them or us, and when the bolts are flying there's no time to make sure everyone on the other side is guilty. Or that all of your own are innocent," he added musingly, looking through Tails's ear at something only he could see. His words came almost as an afterthought.

But ironically his argument had given Tails a leg to stand on himself and with a little effort he could turn it into rhetorical tails to fly with. "Then you make time," he said with a little more assurance – and volume – than he'd meant to. He swatted his forehead as he realized he'd raised his voice but drove ahead anyway to make it sound a little less suspicious. "If you have to kill then you went wrong somewhere along the line. There's always room to be a little faster, smarter, more accurate, whatever you need to be." _I'm usually none of the above, but hey, look at Sonic_. _Only time he ever killed someone is when_ I _shot him at her_.

"Let me guess, your brother the hedgehog taught you that bit, right?" Okay, now that they'd stopped hissing at each other Tails could _definitely_ hear the tongue-lashing building up. "It might even be possible for him. I mean, if you can fly and toss things around with those tails of yours and look _up_ to this guy, there's got to be something to it. But even still, you've been fighting the same warlord for six years now, you say?"

"Eggman's a friend, kind of," the fox said sullenly. _I can't believe I'm grasping at_ that _to prove a point, but it's close enough to true to keep me out from behind another trigger_.

Wedge scowled and the fox shrank away from him. It was a terrifying sight on that bland, friendly face. "Have you asked all the people he uproots or imprisons or just plain blasts if they feel the same way? I don't kill because I enjoy it, believe me, but I enjoy seeing people I could have stopped rampage through _genuine_ innocents even less. Think about that for a change, Tails."

"And the Imperials probably think the same about you," Tails protested. For some reason Wedge relaxed a little.

"I'm counting on it. If things ever get to a point where the people of the Empire think I'm nothing but a criminal then they're probably right. As it is, opinion's divided between the military and everyone else."

"And you wouldn't be either if you'd flown all your missions without killing people."

"Who'd have gone on to mow down a crowd of petitioners on the steps of the planetary capital, or board a luxury liner and shoot up people I might've known a decade ago, or any number of other things. Most of the stormtroopers are probably pleasant enough people, Tails, but we're still enemies. And Imperials have a track record only one notch above pirates when it comes to dealing with civilians that get in their way."

The fox worried at his argument like his feral cousins would a bone. "But they captured you, didn't they? To me that means the Empire's just proven it's stronger than you are."

The glare from earlier hadn't even been a warm-up, but Tails had no room left to cower this time. "Hardly." Wedge's voice was still passionless, but now it belonged to a war robot instead of a quiet young man. "Like I told you, they blasted us out of the sky with enough firepower to shred a lighter ship. They only sent a capture team after us after that, and one of two pilots got away from them anyway. Plus they outnumber us every time and at least match us for firepower on top of that, and their armor just ignores stun shots." He snorted. "Of _course_ they're in a position of strength, and they still realize it's better to put an enemy down if he's still a threat. You need to see that, Tails, or you're going to get us both killed if we ever try to get out of here."

 _I_... _no, he's still wrong, he's got to be_! But Tails didn't have an argument left, just the armor of his denial. _After all, you felt the same about the Metarex, didn't you_? _That's why you sent Cosmo to die, so you could destroy them once and for all_. _No captures, no stun-guns or compromises_. It didn't matter that they might not even have been sentient by the end, he'd still consigned an entire species to its death and only cared about the one part of it he'd known personally. _And you wonder what you've been trying to tell yourself with all these nightmares, Tails_. _You've never been fast or strong or even smart enough to live up to Sonic's expectations of you_. _Or any other thinking being's if Wedge is anything to go by_.

The little fox leaned heavily against the metal slab of their bed, shoulders shaking. Wedge leaned over behind him and started scratching behind his ears again. He'd gotten a lot more accurate in the last few days, Tails had to give him that. "Hey, don't sulk. I won't take any of it back, but there's something else to this whole thing, I can tell. Come on, talk to me."

"Said I could keep it all to myself," Tails muttered through crossed arms. His tails had wrapped tight around the other pilot though, holding him there until the fox could get himself under control, and Wedge gave no sign of pulling away. _Given the way you tug he probably doesn't even know they're there_.

"Unless it threatened the mission or your squadmates, I said. Sure, you're not under my command and Force known when we're getting out of here but I think this fits." The massaging hand tightened a little on the kit's scalp, flicking the three limp bangs back upright. "Tails?"

Tails had screwed his eyes shut, namesakes knotting together behind his cellmate. Half his mind screamed to tell his new friend, to clear things up and maybe even get a little help, but the other half reminded him that it was entirely his own fault and had to stay that way.

The second half was winning when the roof fell in.

* * *

Tails shook off the headache he'd gotten when a slab of rock bounced off his skull. It wasn't that bad, probably not much more than a pebble, and at least it had missed his ears. The same couldn't be said for the sound wave; he could feel the tinnitus shaking his whole body. _Let's see_... _came from right above the bed_. He sighed. _Why am I the only electrician I know who actually wires up circuit breakers_? _It_ can't _be cost-efficient to replace a whole room every time you get a power surge_! At least it took care of the last microphone, although Wedge had taken a much heavier hit than he had so that didn't matter much. The fox knelt in the dust and started heaving debris off of the other pilot with all six limbs. _He's halfway buried_! "Come on, Wedge, people with as many hard landings as we've got can't lose to this little rock pile!"

Eventually the cairn dwindled away, leaving only an even more thoroughly dust-stained duo behind, and Tails rolled his friend face-up. He was breathing shallowly for now, but it was a healthy sort of shallow considering all the sand in the air. _And this gives me an opportunity_. _Sorry, Wedge_. The fox fished around in the dirt for the pistol, dangling it away from himself in the shield's light. "Let's see. Warden said that stunners don't use the gas cylinder at all, but that can't quite be true if...wait, no. It's a switch inside, something to do with the circuits. Need to get this silly thing open." The staccato stream of thoughts came as he turned the weapon delicately around, looking for the elusive access panel or molding seam or whatever else it had.

 _That's it_! There was a little rectangular opening on the back of the grip. "Too small to be the seam for the entire gun though," he mumbled as his fingers worked. "Which means it's probably the gas, and the wiring should be right above it – which makes sense since that's where the dial was on the warden's model. Gotcha!" he cried as the little grey canister popped out at last. Holding it between thumb and forefinger he spun it around, letting the anemic light catch the two golden contacts and large depression at the top. _Man, I wish I had my toolkit_. _Even the screwdriver would be nice right now_. No matter what he was using, rewiring a live appliance by hand was usually scarier than it was worth. _Only right now it's worth quite a lot, so stop fretting and get to work_.

If he'd had the fingers of a feral fox he'd never have gotten them through the tiny opening. That said, a feral fox wouldn't have been millimeters away from electrocution either, so there were trade-offs. _Let's see_. _I need to take the gas cylinder totally out of the equation here, which means I need to take these two wires here and just – got it_? No way had he gotten it right on his first try. Still, without any ammunition there wasn't really anything bad that the gun could do to him unless he really had pulled it off, and even then the worst that could happen was that he and Wedge woke up together a few hours later. Which was pretty bad considering the guards had to be there any second after that cave-in, but nowhere close to lighting himself on fire.

 _And way better than lighting whoever's down the barrel on fire too_. _That's what_ really _matters_.

On the off chance he'd done things right they could quite possibly have a way out of the cell, though, and Tails leveled the pistol in both furry hands. As small as he was he could fit two fingers from each hand under the trigger guard, but none of them seemed interested in slamming the little sliver of metal home. _Come on, you silly fox, it's just a piece of metal_! But even the one shield generator he could still see over the rocks wore Cosmo's face now, grey metal shimmering into overlapping green petals. Just from looking at it he could feel the roselike softness under the protective waxy coating, the touch he'd only just gotten used to before he destroyed the one person it belonged to.

 _And that means this isn't her, idiot_! The illusion faded as he finally jerked the trigger back, squeezing off a rod of blue energy that hammered right through the shield and set the generator sparking. Another shot followed it, then a third, and the dancing blue and purple current erupted into choking black smoke. _Chaos, I hate electrical fires_. _That smell is_ awful! His nose was already shriveled up in anticipation.

Right on cue heavy plastic boots thundered across the rock outside even as _something_ massive set the whole tunnel shaking. "No good, the emergency elevator's blocked off. We need to take the prisoners overland."

"What about our reinforcements? We can't control this many special prisoners with what we've got down here!" either a second trooper or the man's split personality spat back. "Besides, those're the Rogues outside, got to be. They'd nail the landspeeders before we were even out of the blasted caves."

Definitely at least two troopers judging by the overlapping impacts of plastic on plastic. "You want to tell the warden that? Because I'm not going to – what?"

There was a moment of hushed silence that set Tails's fur crawling. He twirled the pistol in his tail and surreptitiously tucked it underneath himself. "Stand down from riot condition," one of the soldiers said. _Great, probably more than just two then if they're giving orders_. "We have max-sec prisoners loose. Stun shots only or Command will flay us alive." _Considering what I've seen of the Empire he just might mean that literally_.

"How'd the Rogues plan this? This is the cell with that Antilles man in it, right?" somehow the voice came across as young and breathless even through the helmet.

Another plastic thud. "They didn't. That shield only popped because the roof hit it on the way down. Rogues wouldn't kill one of their own." Tails's ears picked up a mutter he doubted was meant for anyone else. "They're too good for that."

If Tails was going to get out of here, preferably with Wedge and anyone else who wanted to come, he needed more information than these people were giving him. And that meant it was time to take a calculated risk. "Um, hello? Guards? I'm still here." All right, so it was more of a wild and desperate risk. The fox pushed himself as close to upright as the tilted rocks above him would allow. "Wedge got hit when the rocks came down and I didn't want to leave him. The shield only went down a few seconds ago. What's going on?" _Funny_. _I didn't make up a single word of that_.

Four long black muzzles snaked through the debris to cover him while the flashlights under them ripped at his much-abused eyes. "Rebel attack and a riot in the outer areas. We're taking the prisoners in this block to our assault walker division for safekeeping. Grab your cellmate and move."

Tails eased himself out of the rubble, palms outspread and a cheesy smile on his face. "Sure, sure. Give me a minute here..." He felt the silence as much as he heard it. _They can't have seen the pistol yet, can they_? He had his answer as he started turning around. _No, not the pistol_. _Not the pistol at all_. _Blast it_.

The Tibanna gas cylinder lay out on the open floor where he'd left it, dully glinting in the portable lights. Tails whipped his head back around to the squad, tails cracking out into a wider stance as he willed his cramped muscles back to life. _No time to go for the blaster anyway even if it would work_. _Even if I thought I could use it_. _Probably easier like this anyway_. The thoughts whipped through his skull in an instant, then he dropped onto one arm and catapulted himself through the debris at the surprised stormtroopers.

It had been so long since Tails's last real flight – in fact, this still didn't count – but he'd never forgotten the syrupy sensations of adrenaline. From what he'd gathered Sonic got the same thing, which probably explained a lot about his big brother's achievements. The whole world slowed down around him even as he swam through it only a little faster than the rest. He wasn't really moving any quicker, not really, not the way Sonic could, but his body was giving him all the time he needed not to crash into everything around him.

Or in this case, to only crash into the things that really deserved it. His tails lashed out as he hurtled forward, floating through the air at the two furthest rifles even as he grabbed for the two right in his face. For all the fury of his attack, though, he was still somewhere under twenty-five kilograms on a good day and most of that was fur, and he'd stretched himself too far going for everyone at once. A single blaster carbine tore away in his left tail as he looped it behind the grip and yanked, but the others were barely knocked aside.

And one of them hadn't even gotten that far. Something far, far beyond scalding plowed along the kit's back and he screamed as he felt the fur scorch, but it was still a near miss. So were the next two, although considering the ice-burn of frigid air across the fresh scar he probably wouldn't have noticed.

His ears were reporting a different kind of chaos, one of confused squawks and indignant protests, but Tails didn't have enough focus to spare for any of it. He flipped himself around as best he could, yelping as the blaster burn twisted and tore even wider, and hammered his feet against the knees of the man who'd shot him. With all four free limbs to support him his small frame was still enough to flatten the poor soldier, who shrieked loudly enough to get through the confusion as his kneecaps stopped resisting.

At least with that attack Tails had broken their line, and as the other two armed soldiers tried to catch up he rocked to his feet – grinding the new-made char of his back into ever finer scabs – and ducked around behind them. Well, as close to behind as they would let him get; they were wary now, backs to the cell or the wall as the one dove for his weapon and the other two tried to get another shot off. The soldier on the ground pitched and moaned, screams breaking off into sobs, and the fox wanted to just roll over and surrender so they could all go get his legs fixed together.

 _Focus_! _You can reassemble them once they've stopped trying to take_ you _apart_! He was still low to the ground, a small stiff target that was clearly giving the troopers fits, and even though it couldn't be another knockout he slapped the outside rifle away with both tails. If nothing else his nerves were damming up the burn signals; he couldn't feel anything more detailed than a general screaming pain now. _What an improvement_.

The movement must have jostled the trooper's finger, because the blue flare of a stun bolt lanced directly from one gun to the next. Tails had maybe an eighth of a second to react after the stricken rifle sparked, and even with his adrenaline-fired reflexes he couldn't physically get out of the way before the explosion. The small blast wave plastered his burned hide against the far wall as snaggletoothed shrapnel tried to cage him there, and only through a small miracle did he peel himself off with only five or six minor cuts to the insides of his calves. The cavern hadn't been so lucky; he could still hear a fresh rain of boulders clattering to a rest just down the hall. Mercifully it wasn't blocking the exit, not yet.

Then he looked up to see the two concussed troopers trying to throw away the second rifle, and only after that did he pick out the metal lance buried in the stock. _No fair_.

The second blast dealt with the other two soldiers, but this time Tails was left with three or four new splinters trying to find paths to his lungs and his back so badly split he wouldn't be entirely surprised if he could touch his own spine. And there was still one soldier climbing to his feet, one man still with a gun, and although he was obviously dazed he was still more mobile than the savaged kit. The fox watched through a brownish haze as the final rifle swam towards him almost leisurely, feeling his beloved speed bleed away into the rocks of Kessel. The barrel came to a rest directly above his muzzle and he wondered what the faceless man was feeling about him, the mutant who'd just crippled his friend. As a final blue flash ripped his sight away Tails felt the trooper fall onto his legs spasming, and behind him was Wedge Antilles with the holdout blaster steaming in his hand.

* * *

Tails twitched his way back into wakefulness. Whatever rest he'd gotten had been fitful, with sounds and sensations – mainly pain – filtering through constantly without ever quite waking him up entirely. The closest he'd come had been a weird icy slime across his back. Now that he actually was awake he quickly realized why he'd had a problem with that. _How could my back feel anything_? _Those grooves in it have to be burned clean through_! But no, the entire admittedly insignificant width of his back was feeding him feelings again, and even if they all set his stomach churning with the crackling and twisting and breaking when his charred skin slid they shouldn't have been there in the first place and that was much more important. Plus, that liquid and the odd sense that he had fresh fur already had him curious. _No, not fur_. _Bandages, maybe_? Regardless, he could smell char and burnt flesh, neither of which he'd ever wanted to associate with again.

Against his better judgment the fox rolled up on his side, feeling gravel snag between his belly fur and the loose cloth across his chest as he moved. _Yep, definitely bandages. I hope they got that trooper's legs set first though, poor guy really needs it_. The scars flanking his spine complained but he resolved to ignore them. After all there was no avoiding the pain at this point, and besides whatever that icy cream he could feel smeared over him was probably the best medical care he could expect. With a final aching twist he sat fully upright, blinking away the darkness as he tried to make sense of his situation.

And someone grabbed him by his right shoulder and promptly pressed him back into the dirt. "Stay down until you're ready to move," Wedge hissed from somewhere above him. _I was_! Tails wanted to complain, but since it felt like there was still plasma in his fur he had to agree with the man after all. Wedge reached down into his boot with the hand he'd just used to flatten the fox and tossed him the pistol, keeping a confiscated trooper rifle braced on a shield generator. "You've had fifteen minutes to rest, no more." _And that explains why I don't feel like I've slept_. _I didn't_.

As Tails looked around and took all that in he started to realize exactly where they'd ended up. More or less. _That's probably one of those side corridors I got marched past, like where the poor Talz jumped us_. _If it's the same one then we don't have far to go, just a straight line past that sonic shower or whatever it was and we're at the hangar_.

"I'm ready to move," he said breathlessly after another minute. "Why aren't we going? Those troopers said Rogue Squadron was here and I bet they're wai –" Wedge jabbed sharply at the ground and the fox caught his shut-up gesture instinctively. Keeping his ears ducked – not something he actually had to worry about after his ordeal but still worth keeping conscious track of – Tails edged out past his friend's ankles to see what was going on. _Nothing_? "Wedge, what's wrong?" he whispered as if he was hiding from the microphones again. In fact, that was entirely possible, but something else clearly had the pilot's guard up.

And as he started focusing properly he realized he didn't need things explained to him. _Gunfire down the corridor_. _Can't see the flashes so I've got no idea where it's coming from_. The high sharp notes echoed and overlapped, making it impossible for even Tails's big ears to pin them down. _Bet Knuckles would know exactly what was up_. _Of course, Knuckles would've just bowled those first four guys over and moved on so it wouldn't have been a problem_. It wasn't that great of a hop from the hulking red echidna to Sonic, and it was even easier to get from there to homesickness. "Wedge," he panted again, "can we get moving?"

And again he was hushed, but at least this time the pilot gave him an explanation. "Not in this direction, not yet. Troopers everywhere, and some of the prisoners got blasters."

Tails frowned at him. "Isn't that a good thing?" Again the hushing gesture. _I'm not even making noise_! _Come on, Wedge_. At least he knew better than to moan that complaint aloud no matter how tempting it seemed. "They're on our side too, right?"

"Tails, turn around," Wedge instructed him. Tails cocked his head and ears quizzically, but obeyed. His eyes shot open and he promptly vomited a thin stream between his hands into the dust. _I thought the burning smell was my back_. _Not_...

Five corpses lay draped across a barricade of overturned tables and gurneys. At least, it looked like five, but considering the circumstances it could easily be more. One in particular was chest-up with his head thrown horribly back, staring just past the fox through the other door to the room. And as he looked at it, transfixed, he thought he recognized it. "That's him, isn't it?" His voice was hushed for a whole host of reasons now, but stealth was no longer among them. "The...the doctor who took me in for those tests." If it weren't for the face Tails wouldn't even have been able to tell the victim was a man, because whatever clothes he'd worn had been fused with his ribcage under sustained blaster fire. "Who did this?" His hands cramped up and he took a few deep breaths, managing to steady neither his nerves nor his stomach but at least easing the pressure in his fists.

"I don't agree with the Empire on most things," Wedge muttered a little louder than usual. Tails had always thought Wedge's voice usually sounded cold. Now, as he stood there shivering, he realized how wrong he'd been. "Pirates are one of the exceptions."

Tails's voice was as calm and level as Wedge's but the way his hands and feet and tails jittered gave him the lie. "People do this to each other here? These guys didn't –" Wedge rounded on him while keeping the rifle braced and Tails shrank back.

"No, they didn't deserve it. But they had things the other runaways wanted." He tossed his head at the other opening, which was even worse-lit than the one he was guarding. "Cover, medical supplies, and I think maybe a way out."

If there'd been any substance to those ration packs Tails would probably have lost it then. Even with nothing left there was still a deep ache as his stomach tried to heave again and again. And a much deeper one as he tried to process that the enthusiastic young medic who'd recognized his hate for needles and handled him as gently as he could had been shredded like that for no better reason than bad timing. He didn't bother unclenching his fists this time, not even as the muscles in his hands began to ache. "Well, what are we waiting here for?" This time the fox didn't even bother trying to keep his voice down no matter how frantically Wedge gestured. "Wedge, tell me what's going on down here!" There was a whiny edge to his voice but at this point he was beyond caring.

The man ran his free hand through his hair. "All right, Tails, all right. The rioters must've blasted their way through the wall somehow. Actually, I think it came from the other side since the rubble's all in here. If it was a laser drill it wouldn't leave much debris either way. Anyway," he pressed on before Tails could sidetrack him with questions. "The warden moved in with what looked like a full twenty stormtroopers and choked off the tunnels. Some of us from the back room stuck together, but we scattered when they showed up."

"You left people behind? But if you lost other people, people who could actually fight...then why'd you save me?" Tail's voice was tiny, almost swallowed by the still cave air before it reached even his own ears.

"Because you aren't with Black Sun or Zann or the Hutts," Wedge explained with a long-suffering air. _It sounds like he's heard this before, then._ "I don't think even a dedicated Imperial spy could play their part quite as well as you have, Tails, let alone a raider. And because of that I knew you wouldn't do something like _this_." Tails closed his eyes, feeling the heat just behind his lids. _Oh, Wedge, you have no idea how wrong you are_. _I'd like to think I wouldn't be this petty or savage about it, but I'm not sure how much credit I can give myself_. "Look, I don't have to kill those people, especially not with the stormtroopers already on it. But I owe them nothing either. And besides," he added, "I'm more worried about the people down the other hole, down in the mine tunnels. But if it _was_ a laser drill that opened this tunnel there'll be no way for us to escape down that end." Wedge shuddered a little, muttering rapidly under his breath.

Tails ignored the pilot's rapid-fire planning. "Drill," he repeated slowly instead. Anything to distract himself from the horror around and inside him. "Right, the mines. I know they intersect with the main tunnel back up where we were because the troopers dragged someone down them. But you're right, unless these guys are total idiots we'd just end up trapped by the guards an...what?" Wedge was looking at him with an odd expression. And then, slowly, he started to laugh.

"'Unless they're total idiots,' he said with a chuckle. "Well, Tails, we might just have a chance after all!"

* * *

Tails scurried through the passage downrange of Wedge on all fours, namesakes dragging through the dirt and eviscerated holdout gun clamped between his teeth. _I'm probably going to regret this_ , and he didn't just mean the dental bill. Even with the Tibanna canister tucked safely into his tail fluff so smoothly he could barely keep track of it, he was still charging an unknown but large number of the same people who'd set his back on fire earlier essentially unarmed. Wedge's covering fire wouldn't amount to much either, and of course if things went according to plan he wouldn't shoot at all. They needed the stormtroopers chasing Tails down the wrong corridor, and if that was going to happen his teammate had to stay unseen. They'd argued over who got decoy duty, of course, but in the end the fox's small size and superior speed had won out. _Assuming I've still got that speed with my back all messed up_.

 _Stop complaining, Tails_. _You volunteered, didn't you_? _Besides, this is what Sonic taught you to do best_. _You're not about to let him down_ again _, right_? There were times when he wondered how crazy it was to want to snarl at his own conscience. _There are times for those thoughts_. _This isn't one of them_. _You're about to run right into_ –

And then there he was. The cavern had been growing marginally better-lit as he approached, mostly by strobing red and white lights and the off-blue radiance of whatever shields had held out this long. He was already about as low to the ground as he could be but he pressed himself down a little further, a ribcage trained against the Emerald Hill Zone's local bullies barely registering the protruding rocks. Ears tucked back he edged his head around the corner and finally got a good look at what had left Wedge running scared.

 _Definitely more than twenty_ , he thought almost calmly even as his heart pumped faster than the Tornado's engine. _Warden's scarier though_. The man still didn't have a helmet on for whatever reason – even if he didn't think he needed one against the prisoners, surely the cave-ins should have convinced him! Of course, judging from his demeanor he probably assumed he could take either and win handily. A sword that looked too cylindrical to be practical glowed yellow in his hand – _maybe it's a shock prod? That'd explain it_ – while a weapon somewhere between a carbine and pistol waited at his hip. An already familiar smell wafted down the passageway. Tails wrinkled his nose as tight as his tired muscles could make it go, gagging as the stench of burning flesh washed over him once again. _All right, I need to get their attention and then try not to get myself killed too badly_. _Easy, right_? _Sonic's done it loads of times_.

 _Of course, you're not Sonic, are you, Tails_? He stamped down on that thought – bruising his toes against the rough ground in the process – before it could take root. _No time for that_. His hindquarters lifted off the ground, wriggling a little as he nerved himself up. _Let's see_. _Got to be at the right time –_ _maybe when they're distracted so I get my chance to run_? It had worked well enough in Emerald Hill, of course, although he rather doubted that the soldiers were quite foolish enough to fall for a tossed rock or something no matter what Wedge had said.

And while he huddled in that corner waiting to pounce, Tails saw something that changed the plan completely.

A little down the hallway he could see the first cell in the block, its shield still shimmering through the gloom. The warden stowed his sword, the yellow glow-rods set in a plus formation around the black cylinder dimming. In its place he drew his blaster, and without even bothering to bring it up and aim he simply locked back the trigger and sent a storm of red bolts straight into the barrier. Tails could hear the screams, attenuated but not at all blocked by the still-intact shield, and suddenly all rational thought of evasion and maneuver went straight out of the airlock. He spat out the blaster shortly before he would have bitten through it and snatched it up as he hurled himself through the hallway directly at the Imperial officer.

The stormtroopers snapped their rifles up, but even in the much broader tunnels out here there was still such a thing as overkill and most of them had no way to even aim at the fox. Those who could held back, though, since Tails's enraged charge had carried him all the way to their commander. A leaping double-pawed kick sent his heavy blaster skittering against the shield, leaving it sparking unhealthily. With a snarl the grey-haired old man snatched the sword back out, only to find it wrapped tightly in a tail. The fox knew he was a hair away from wresting control of the weapon away from the warden when a high whine filled the air. His ears flattened reflexively, but whatever pain the sound was causing was utterly insignificant compared to what the sword had just done to him.

His tail uncoiled and withdrew, not that it had much choice, and he felt the cold stickiness of his blood somewhere he'd rarely had to before. For almost its entire length his precious tail had been skinned down well into the muscle, and unlike the blaster bolts this sword wasn't polite enough to cauterize the would. For a stunned second Tails just stood there staring at his crippled namesake as his own blaster clattered to the floor, then the other tail came up by reflex to hold the man's arm at bay before his swing could take the kit's head off too. It wasn't entirely successful, not when shock had left him powerless, but the frantic move at least bought him enough time to scramble back down on all fours and try to break off down the hallway with little more than a nick across the scalp.

Of course, that brought its own problems with it. For one thing, the soldiers now had a mostly clear shot at him, and for another the warden's reach was still substantially longer than Tails was even before factoring in that obscene sword. But one problem could sometimes solve another, and as the soldiers fired intermittent bolts in the fox's general direction their leader ducked back out of their way to salvage his own gun. With the injuries he'd taken he didn't know if he could outrun the soldiers after all, and with his blaster gone he couldn't even try to knock a few of them out or damage their weapons like before.

Gritting his teeth, the badly beaten fox took off at the closest thing to a sprint he could manage, going back on all fours and keeping his mauled tail held stiffly aloft. Between the white fur and the weeping fluids it would stand out like a neon "shoot me" sign in the troopers' flashlights, but he was moving quickly enough even with his back crumbling into dust around him that they'd have a little trouble with that. More to the point he was moving so _erratically_ that even saturation fire wasn't quite doing it. The cave was wide enough and he was so tiny within it that the limited front line couldn't hit every spot he might dodge into, and through a minor miracle he started to open the gap.

More shields started to show up alongside him, their prisoners watching with anticipation at the unexpected show as Tails charged along, his entire body waving as again and again he kicked off the ground with each pair of limbs just like his feral ancestors. Not even the harsh ground was going to slow him down here!

Not until it exploded centimeters from his face. A blaster bolt finally went high instead of low and shards of half-melted rock clawed furrows in his cheek, mercifully scalding them closed again as they passed. _At least it'll go with my back and tail_ , he thought hazily as he pitched forward and landed hard on the point of his chin. His skull sang with the impact, but unlike before the ringing and the flashing lights faded quickly to let him hear a single pair of boots clattering closer. _Not like this_. Barely conscious though he was, Tails's nerves had run out of space to pump in pain signals and his brain was whirring away at full speed. _Not here_!

He had no idea why it was he chose that precise moment to lash out. It wasn't as if he could see the warden while lying face-down in the dirt, after all. But his healthy tail slammed across the tunnel at flying speed to hit something metallic out of his killer's hand. The weapon was surprisingly hot to the touch even before it sent a bolt of energy sparking somewhere he couldn't see. And with that the exhausted kit had one surprise left to share. He kicked off the ground as hard as he could, lunging as high as his damaged body was willing to accept, and started spinning his tails together. The flayed one burned, he screamed, but he couldn't stop flying now. Too much was riding on his success – if the soldiers thought to check back on Wedge, or even keep executing prisoners, when he could have led them off by just pushing himself a little harder, it would hurt far more than a filleted tail or a blaster bolt to the spine. He heard filtered gasps and yells behind him but no blaster fire, and finally he took the opportunity to look back. The entire force, warden included, was charging forward as fast as they could, weapons forgotten in their haste. And then Tails's eyes widened and were promptly overloaded as the officer's battered pistol finally broke. An eruption of white light filled the room and close on its heels the thunderclap knocked everyone to the ground.

The fox scrabbled to his feet despite slipping a few times as the rock shuddered and broke beneath him, and his own trembling didn't help matters. _Way too much like lightning for my liking_. He slipped and slithered across the ground time after time, his bloody, weeping tail hurting so much that he could barely feel his legs. Blind with the darkness and pain, Tails groped around for it until he finally managed to grab the undamaged fur at the tip of the tail and tossed the whole limb up over his shoulder. It lay there limply and he had to resist the urge to whisper to it like a frightened pet.

He had finally managed to get himself upright again when another thunderclap came, this one jolting its way through the ceiling. He didn't even bother looking back this time. _I can't help them out of a cave-in now_. _I'm just not strong enough_. Wherever the boulders landed they'd be sure to dam up the tunnel, leaving him stuck with just one passage left open to him, and if he was really unlucky they'd even force the soldiers to double back right to where Wedge was running. _No, he's got to get away_. _I might have been an idiot and messed everything up for him, but I can't let him get caught too_!

But no, there was nothing left to do. The situation had completely left the kit's hands now, and with a sob that wracked his whole body he sat down and simply watched the falling rocks block the soldiers from view. _Maybe they're trapped in there_ , _like between two different fracture points or something_. _Then they could get out in a little while if they dig or shoot the rocks_. _But the prisoners in those cells will be stuck in there with them, and the warden was killing everybody_. _I don't care what they did to the medic_ , no one _deserves what I just caused_.

His eyes burned, a sensation he'd grown far too familiar with for his big brother's tastes, and after watching helplessly a few minutes more the defeated little fox stood up and trudged down the hallway. His shoulders shook, his breath came hard, but worst of all was the sad green figure that danced just ahead of his closed eyes. _Tails, why do you keep failing_? It wasn't Cosmo's voice, it wasn't his voice, it wasn't _any_ voice, it was just the product of his own nightmares.

But he listened anyway. _Why do you keep making things worse for everyone? I thought you wanted to be a helpful person._

 _I do_ , he tried to protest, but his brain wouldn't let him silence himself so easily. No, that wasn't true. It was the thought of _Cosmo_ rebuking him he couldn't stop. He could see her face so clearly, lit like they were back on the Blue Typhoon instead of buried in some freezing tunnel under Kessel. _I thought I was trying_! That thought he could hear, in the high whining tones he used whenever Sonic or Eggman beat him in some argument.

 _You were_. Cosmo's expression softened for a moment, but his hopes fell with her face. _But you don't succeed_. _You killed all of those men and women back there just like you killed me, and what did it earn you besides a slow death of your own_?

"No," he muttered as he sagged to the ground, energy drained at last. "No, I'm not going to..." His mouth didn't even fully close before he fell asleep again, but Cosmo refused to leave. Alone in his mind Tails just stared into her mournful eyes and waited for something to change.

 _Because Chaos knows I can't change things myself_.


	5. Chapter 5

"Sonic the Hedgehog" and all related IP are the property of Sega.

The "Star Wars" series and Expanded Universe are the property of Disney.  
This is a work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

The crawl from one intersection to the next had seemed so short the last time Tails had made it. To be fair, he'd been carried along by a squad of people twice his size, so it hadn't actually been a crawl. Even so, he had to have been at least halfway there when the tunnel had caved in behind him, and somehow he was still dragging his weeping tail past cell after cell with no sign of the exit.

He hadn't _only_ been limping along, though, he reminded himself as scrabbling sounds echoed from behind some freshly-fallen stone on his left. As soon as his ears had stopped ringing he'd hurled himself at the first blocked cell door he'd seen. The fox had never experienced a cave-in in person but Knuckles had shared plenty of echidna stories, and he found it all too easy to imagine each of the components to that kind of death. Freezing cold at first, then stifling warmth, breath that didn't fill his lungs, the breaking pain of rocks against his joints – that one was particularly fresh in his mind – and of course the ever-growing hunger and thirst and desperation as hope shriveled and died. He'd gone through each piece individually at some point or another and those memories had driven him to pull every muscle in his upper arms trying to stop whoever was behind that wall of rubble from feeling them all at once. But the debris had been too heavy – _no, I was just too weak_. _Knuckles wouldn't even have noticed those rocks and Sonic could have drilled right through_. _If anyone's going to get out they're going to do better without me getting underfoot_.

But somehow that still felt like he was lying to himself. Like he was letting himself run away. And that sneaking suspicion prodded another corner of his brain into action. _Of course you're trying to get away, Tails_. _Half of one tail is gone, your hands and feet are scratched beyond recognition, you don't even_ know _what happened to your back_ , _and now your arms aren't working either_! The argument didn't quell the shame churning just below his growling stomach, in fact if anything it worsened it, but it also got him moving again. He gave a last pitying glance at the newest fallen wall and pressed on.

The battered kit was down on three limbs, arching his fileted tail over his head and holding it taut by the bedraggled tuft of fur left on the tip with his free hand. Ironically enough his namesakes were still living up to their most basic purpose; his tripodal stance would have been horrendously unstable on the shifting floor if he hadn't been able to shift both tails around to hold his balance. The pain had quieted now, at least, though the fox had no idea why. He'd dragged the skinned strip that spiraled along that one tail through the dirt and stone at least twice now, after all. Still, even though he could still move, it was a long slog along a path he still never quite had the night vision to see. At least that meant that some of the shields were still up, and hopefully by the time the warden dug his way out of the debris the alert would be off and he'd stop shooting people.

That thought pumped a little energy back into him. _Yeah, it was a stupid hero stunt, I guess_. _But I learned from the best_. _Although Sonic would probably have taken them all out before they even saw him_. _Still_... _no, no matter what Wedge said about the other prisoners in here I'm not going to let people stroll through and hurt them like that_. He felt what was left of his fur bristling and his lips drew back into a thin snarl. _Chaos knows I've had enough of that treatment myself_. And then his brain started talking back again.

 _Okay, yeah, so you were a weakling back in Emerald Hill too_. _Don't you_ dare _compare that to getting shot through a locked door_!

"Will you two shut up?" he muttered under his breath. It was cathartic no matter how crazy he sounded. At least he was the only one who could hear. And it brought the burgeoning argument to a halt before his thoughts could run away with him again.

Tails' eyes were on the ground, both in the forlorn hope that he might eventually see what was in front of him before it cut into his feet or stabbed his palm and because he simply lacked the stamina to keep his head off the floor for much longer. Still, when he crabwalked over a particularly jagged shard he dragged himself up a little in surprise. _How'd I see that...ah._

Apparently the cell doors weren't the only shields still working. The entire three-way grid between him and his old cave – and more importantly the mine access tunnel where they'd dragged that Talz – was glowing close enough he was almost amazed his whiskers weren't smoldering. Not that the barriers gave off any heat, but they looked so much like they should he felt almost offended. Better than feeling ashamed of himself or crazed with pain though, so he'd take it. _Okay, come on_. _How do I open this_? He was going to need both hands for this so he draped his mauled tail around his neck like a pus-seeping winter scarf and used the generator housing to hoist himself back to his feet. _Let's see –_ _controls are up top but since I've got time I want to figure out what these things really_ do.

Besides, while he could probably just press buttons randomly and hope for the best the symbols on the access pad weren't what he was used to. They seemed tantalizingly familiar, like numbers on a digital clock, but if he made a wrong assumption and overloaded the circuits or something... _not like I won't do that easier by poking around inside it, right_? The thought brought a wry grin to the surface, something much softer than the rictus his wounds had locked him into at first, and the simple action left him feeling like he'd had a nice hot drink for the first time in months. _Now_ that's _a sensation I'm never going to forget_. _Hot chocolate with whipped cream and peppermint leaves from that restaurant Sonic stopped at the late autumn he met me_. _More of it got on my whiskers and cheek fur than actually went in my mouth_. He shook himself, little clouds of dust wafting down from his ears. Those memories would have to wait – he might have been able to take apart and reassemble the Tornado in his sleep but he'd never worked with Imperial technology before and he needed to be focused for this part. _Man do I wish I still had Sonic's screwdriver though_!

Unlike the blaster's housing the generator had a little lever pushed all the way to the bottom of its maintenance panel. It moved easily at first, then caught about halfway up. The fox took a deep breath and then let it go, grabbing for the rounded panels and easing them apart. The first centimeter passed smoothly before they jammed against their internal lock and Tails sighed again. _Don't be nervous_ , he reminded himself, _it's just a piece of tech like any other_. He pressed the clamshell panels back together until they clicked home and tried the lever again. This time, as soon as it caught he threw his scrawny shoulders into the effort, his already damaged muscles flooding his brain with resignation letters, until the lock slid away and the two halves of the cylinder flexed open. He just sat there staring at the machine for a moment, tongue wedging his teeth open as he panted. _This is going to be a long project_ , _I can already tell_.

Still, it wasn't like he had anything else to do, and even if he managed to cook himself on a live wire at least he'd probably bring the shield down anyway when he woke up. He'd done much stupider things on the Typhoon and lived, after all. And at least the Empire's electricians seemed to be neater than he or Eggman had ever been, although amid the plain circuit boards and impossibly untangled cable runs he noticed the distinct lack of any emergency breakers. _Why does that no longer surprise me_? But even though he sighed most of the nerves had gone flooding out now that he was back in his element. _Now if I just had an electrode of my own_. _Something to convince that output cable that it'd gotten the right signal_. _I don't think the computer's going to give it the go-ahead unless I enter the right code and I've got no real_... _wait_.

It was a risky idea considering that the shield was still switched on, but if he'd had his gloves Tails wouldn't have even thought twice. He gently tugged at the output cable that wrapped around the circuit board under the keypad until it came free, exposed metal dully reflecting the shield's blue and grey. "He's made it through the first step with no electrocutions," he said in the closest thing to an Earth sports announcer voice he could manage, though he'd never heard any announcer sound so fatigued. "Can he keep it going?" He slid the covered part of the cable forward between his middle and index fingers, keeping the rest of his hand as far from the surprisingly heavy-gauge wire as he could feasibly get, and eased the whole thing closer to the keypad.

And that was when the nerves in his wounded tail finally got bored of holding back the pain. The fox's whole body jolted as the wet skin burned colder than the wind outside. The wire slipped from his suddenly flaccid hand and struck something clearly important. He lurched away from the spark, whimpering and flinching at the miniature thunderclap and dense puff of smoke that followed, and fresh pain rocketed through him as the wrist he caught himself with twisted and gave. His back and both tails hammered the ground repeatedly until finally his nervous system couldn't hold any more and deadened the pain again. For a few minutes he just lay there, eyes open but unseeing, chest ratcheting in and out as his heart and lungs gradually realized he hadn't just sprinted a marathon.

Then the maroon spots and blue-violet waves stopped dancing and fell out from in front of him, and in their place was an open hallway. The other two barricades were still up, but as long as his body obeyed this time he knew what to do, and from there he could find his way back to the infirmary and out. Wedge had to be gone by now, and the other rebel pilots with him, but as long as Tails could touch the sky one more time he could accept whatever else happened.

Ever since the second shield had collapsed Tails' nose had been assaulted with an odor he couldn't wait to forget. _I get the feeling I'm going to be way too familiar with burning person by the time I get out of this_. Not even wrinkling his nose, breathing shallowly through his mouth, and holding the tip of his filleted tail in front of both could keep it out; the history of blaster fire had worn itself into the walls of this place. _And I'm stumbling down deeper into it trying to stay_ alive. _Something seems kind of backwards here_. But he'd volunteered to loop around through the medical room anyway, and even with his litany of injuries it still sounded like a good plan.

Then he stumbled over something much softer and warmer than the rock, and that assumption promptly died. _Smell's really strong here_. _Whoever this poor guy was they must have shot him during the breakout_. But then he realized where the body was laid. _No, wait, he was trying to get back_ into _the cell blocks_. _What kind of place is this that that's a_ good _idea_?

Well, if he wanted to get out of it he'd end up learning sooner or later, so the little fox squared his shoulders as best he could while down on all threes and stepped gingerly over the corpse. There was a faint ripple of white light against the rock in a surprisingly round tunnel to his left and he moved towards it as quickly as he could manage.

* * *

The stink of burned flesh and ozone tang of energy fire was concentrated enough to immediately bowl Tails over, and after the darkness of the tunnels seeing such bright light sent even more tears to his eyes as he tried to ward off the crippling overstimulation. He wasn't able to shut out the stench anywhere near enough, though, and his retch echoed loudly down the side corridor. Almost instantly a hailstorm of eye-searing crimson bolts hammered the opposite wall into shrapnel and Tails ducked into the smallest ball he could manage, skinned tail sticking straight up with its white tuft forming a flag of surrender. After a few seconds of silence he surreptitiously uncurled and checked his fur for fresh debris. Finding none he crouched as hard as his back and legs could stand in Sonic's signature sudden-start stance. He stared at the little pool of light between him and safety, swallowing hard, and then cannoned forward and sailed across it. Another blaster volley followed eventually, presumably once the gunners figured out what they'd just seen, and Tails silently thanked them. They'd shown him his ticket out.

Now that he knew what to look for he could make out a tall box that managed to be even darker than the rest of the room. It was probably just his overloaded brain toying with him by now, but if it helped him out anyway then he'd take whatever he could get. He inched closer to it, letting his night vision reset yet _again_ , and finally smacked his chapped nose squarely into a heavy metal rim. He pinged off of it, managing to catch himself with both hands and his safe tail before he broke anything else. As he massaged his nose ruefully he used his free hand to examine the object he'd just collided with. It was big, no doubts there, and now that he was actually checking it out in detail he felt little tank treads underneath it. _Lucky I hit it where I did –_ _a few centimeters either way and I'd have pinched my muzzle in the treads_. _That_ hurts.

For the first time since he'd been locked up on the Emerald-forsaken rock Tails' eyes were genuinely adapting to the darkness around him, and a pressure he'd grown so used to he'd forgotten was there leaked out of his forehead as he stopped straining for sight. It felt like he'd let out a weeks-old breath and his whole body sagged in relief as his brain finally adapted. _Good, there's a door_. _A door_ , he thought giddily – maybe that bit about letting out a breath wasn't just a metaphor, and indeed he was breathing ever more rapidly despite his relaxation. And that sent his heart into overdrive, and then the pressure all came flooding back.

Shaking his head, Tails hopped up on the tread, careful not to get his feet stuck somewhere he might not get them back, and jostled the latch until the door swung open. He was left dangling from that latch by one hand as his weight carried the door outwards, but it was just as fun an experience as his euphoria of seconds before that he didn't care. In fact, he rocked himself forward and back, a kit on a swingset, and the hinges stayed tolerantly silent all the while.

Then he got a look at the cabin and promptly let go, landing heavily on his skinned tail. At least the sudden tidal surge of fresh pain knocked him out of his shock, letting him devote what little coherent thought remained to scrambling away and trying to process what he'd just seen. _No smell_. _No char or blaster burns or anything. And he looked almost...skeletal, but if Wedge was right they had to use this thing just a few hours ago to burn through the wall_! _He can't have decayed – plus I bet I'd smell that too, wouldn't I_? _What's going on down here_? His thoughts came just as thick and fast as moments before, but panic had swelled up to replace euphoria and he could hear the pitch of his mental voice rising sharply.

He was breathing fast enough to shame the birds he so often flew past, but even though he couldn't get his lungs under control his brain eventually wrested command back from his spinal reflexes. "Right," he said a little more loudly than he'd meant to. "I don't have a light or a weapon or any energy left, so the only way out is through. The only way out is through." The little reminder steadied him another fraction more and he finally caught his breath, slowing down from hyperventilation. Then he pulled himself up, his pus-coated skin sticking to the dirt as his tail popped out after him, and tugged the dead man out of the open seat. The corpse clattered more than it squished, but by now Tails couldn't even tell if it had sent a shiver down his spine or set his fur on end. Besides, all the noise really did was confirm that the man really was as skeletal as he'd looked. How he'd _gotten_ that way, though, was still an open question and one the fox hoped never had to be answered.

There was only a tiny layer of dust on the machine's controls, and that did more to spook Tails than anything about the corpse itself had. _Whatever happened, it's only been a few hours at most considering all the debris down here_. _I've got to get out of here_ now _before my heart pops_! And to that end he needed to get the machine switched back on. His eyes skittered off of the unfamiliar alphabet so instead he guessed at the controls simply by position and size. _Big red button_. _That's probably a good thing since it's not under some kind of cover_. The big knobbed stick between his legs – he had to snicker at that, _I'm ten, I'm entitled to a little immaturity from time to time –_ was obviously the control, and considering that there was a much smaller joystick on the raised panel it was presumably in charge of the drive while the little one governed the drill. _At least, assuming this is the vehicle that drilled that shaft in the first place_.

Well, he might as well find out. There didn't seem to be any ignition or on switch, although even now that he could see things at all most of the cabin was still pitch-black so it wouldn't be too hard to miss. Rather than waste more time in this creepy hole looking at the panels, though, he wrapped stiff-jointed fingers around the upper joystick and angled it upward. To his almost delirious joy servomotors ground around him and pitched a big cylinder he'd completely failed to see before up a few degrees per second. Another snicker broke the surface. _Who was that human psychologist_? _I guess he really was on to something universal_. If the machine had been lit and well-maintained he assumed he'd have had some way to tell where the hole was going to end up, but in the absence of any sights the best way to find out was to simply pull the trigger.

Except he couldn't. His finger tensed, taut against the plastic frame, but it refused to go any further than that. _Oh, come on_! _It's not like I'm shooting anyone with this_. But clearly his memories had a stronger hold over him than that. In frustration he let go of the stick and slammed his hand on the console. Something clicked under his hand, something cold and smooth, and he only realized he'd touched the button by mistake when a blast of light and sound hammered the polarized glass canopy. The dangling door tore free in the backblast and Tails felt his fur freeze to his left leg in the sudden wind, but at least he'd been shielded well enough that he could still see and hear. Whatever the "drill" had fired, there was nothing left but a steaming circle directly in front of him. No rockfall, no shrapnel. No starlight either, though, but that wasn't anything a few more blasts wouldn't fix. Except – the fox's eyes narrowed. Was something moving through those vapor clouds? _I bet whatever killed the other driver did it right after he fired the drill_. The realization tore through him but before he'd even consciously processed the thought he had tackled the other door open and taken off running.

The nearest cover he could make out was a sharp bend in the corridor in front of him, but that was a double-edged sword. He couldn't see around it either, and if there was _something_ coming from that side there was no way he could fight it off. His ears were at full extension, twisting like satellite receivers as they strained for any sounds that might be coming to kill him. _That skittering noise_ – _is that rockfall or is something moving_? And then, blind with his panic, he put his foot squarely down on the jaw of another skeletal corpse. Screaming in fear and yet another source of pain, the kit coiled up and sprang back the way he'd came, body and mind finally in complete agreement. Except now it seemed like the scrabbling sound was closer, like it was all around him, and despite the thin air his lungs and heart slowed to a standstill as he pressed himself into the soft soil between the digger's treads.

He had no idea how long he stayed down there. Every heartbeat seemed to flash past and yet wait seconds to arrive, and the sounds around him were stretched and attenuated to match. Eventually, though, they faded away into the throbs of his own body, vanishing so completely Tails had to wonder if he'd heard them at all. And on the heels of fear came embarrassment and humiliation, and with cheeks burning so hot he felt they ought to light the cavern the fox eased himself out of his safe little burrow and swung back around into the machine, hissing as his back and tail scraped against the grime-encrusted metal. Even when that pain subsided into the general background roar there was still a void-cold patch on his tail, and he knew what that meant from an old experience he'd hoped never to repeat. _Looks like I have a time limit now_ , he thought more calmly than he'd given himself credit for. _Not that the Imperials will be generous with the disinfectant, but maybe I can find an independent who'll help me_. _A lot of people mentioned smugglers –_ _if I can find one of them then maybe I'll make it_.

 _All right, Tails, focus_. The barrel looked like it was in the same place, so all he had to do was hit the button again. But if it wasn't enough... _If it doesn't break through I am_ not _going through that routine again_! His hands tried to curl into fists but his joints were so arthritic after the day's chaos that he couldn't quite pull it off. _So how can I guarantee_... _no, can't rewire it, not in this darkness_. _But I don't have anything else to amp up the blasts either, and besides I don't want to drop the cave on my head_. _But what else is there_?

He must have been sitting in the barely padded chair for five minutes kneading his forehead before the answer hit him, and as soon as it did he hit _himself_ for not seeing it sooner. He oozed back out of the machine, taking great care to keep his injuries safe this time, and rustled around below him for a nice solid rock. Just finding a rock down here in a mineshaft wasn't the hard part; no, the hard part was finding a rock flat and yet coarse enough he could just perch it on the firing stud and leave it there while he ran for shelter. His search led him back to the fringes of the illuminated killzone, and even though he didn't spark another volley the glow murdered his night vision just fine on its own. He felt his forehead knot with the fresh strain and felt an urgent need to scream at the universe's unfairness. He settled for a long groan followed by a yelp of shock when the sentries heard him after all and chewed another meter out of the far wall.

Still, the kit found his stone and placed it proudly on the big red button. He realized just how exposed he was when the backblast hurled him into a corner and the rolling shockwave battered each limb against the stone independently. He dragged himself lurching and groaning back under the treads, only one of each set of limbs responsive enough to get him where he needed to be. No sooner had he tucked himself under the hulking machine than the second blast arrived, kicking the soft dirt into a miniature sandstorm that clogged his nose and mouth in seconds. Defeated, Tails curled up on his side and tucked his face into his fur to wheeze out the worst of it and endure the rest. The cold burn of wound infection vanished into the hot wind as the uninjured parts of his tail were polished smooth by the sand. He had no words to describe what happened to the wounded strip.

Between the tread wheels he could see the lights start to shake, or maybe those were just the tears in his eyes. His whole face was rigid with the pain and fear, his eyes locked as wide as they could be. Shadows speared across the charred wall as plastic-plated feet clattered across the stone. Eventually they came into view, three pairs of filth-caked white boots. Flashlights strobed as they passed over Tails' hiding place and he held his breath, shivering, as a trooper darted to the machine and knocked the stone out with a ping before the drill could fire a sixth time. But nobody had seen him, not yet at least. He kept one eye open to stare out at the troopers and the other screwed shut. _Please let me get out of here soon_. _Please please please please_ please!

Then the boots all froze in place. "Load with ion. They're trying to lure the spiders!" A few clicks and clatters later everything went mad. Tails was shaking so hard now the machine was probably vibrating with him, but his nervous energy had nothing on the troopers' insane dance. Their spotlights painted senseless patterns across the driller machine as their bearers swung around to track something, blinding white glare accented by crackling blue lightning as they fired at something the fox was grateful he couldn't see. _Lightning outside the windows_. Tails hadn't realized he could tremble even faster than he was already going and he could feel his body tapping the last of its reserves for simple nervous energy.

A rifle clattered to the ground and one of the troopers started shaking his hips violently as he tried to claw something off of his upper body. The same tooth-twisting whine from the warden's sword filled the cavern and something screeched in a timbre no humanoid throat could produce. Then whatever had made it thudded to the ground in front of Tails, its multitude of segmented limbs jittering and crunching as it bounced. At least two of them ended in long daggers that scratched at the kit's ears even as he pressed himself hard against the opposite tread, heedless of his back injury.

And just as suddenly it was gone as a trooper Tails hadn't seen move hammered the fire button one more time and the drill's discharge swept it away. If not for the clayish dirt that had been whipped into his skull by all of the other blasts he figured the backblast from that one would have carried him away with it, just like it had taken his sight and hearing. Again.

As his senses returned, though, he realized that not all the light in the room came from the soldiers anymore. There was a soft circular spotlight on the ground just in front of the driller, light so distant and natural the fox's instincts screamed for him to crawl out and wallow in it. But first he waited while the troopers withdrew into their own tunnel with satisfied if mildly shell-shocked mutters and strained his ringing ears for any sign of the monsters that had attacked them. _Maybe that was the only one_ , he thought without much hope, but he couldn't hear anything and so cautiously eased his way out of the sand berm around him. His heart leapt into his throat as a single articulated leg twitched in front of him and he scurried backwards, leaving claw trails in the sand. But as it continued twitching – and nothing else – he realized it had simply been pinned there when the blast carried its owner away. _I hope_.

Mustering his courage, Tails pulled himself all the way out from under the machine in one giant lunge that carried him well into the pool of light. He looked up at the night sky, so close now after the claustrophobic darkness of the tunnels, and bloodshot blue eyes relaxed open wide. Then he gathered himself for one last leap and landed on the glassy smooth surface of the new shaft.

It may have been as slick as a well-kept window, but it had a much more important trait – it was still warm. Heedless of his injuries Tails nuzzled the stone, worming all the heat he could capture into his fur while he still could. He spent perhaps five minutes there, just luxuriating in the closest thing to comfort he'd had in at least two weeks, before digging his sand-scoured pads into the walls and dragging himself up. At least his dulled limbs were responding again now, but it was still going to be rough going even with the traction his vestigial paw-pads offered. But he was a creature of the sky and stars, and no playground slide was going to keep him from reaching them one more time!

* * *

The escape shaft might not have stopped him from reaching the open air again, Tails reflected as he flopped out over the lip at last and lay panting on his back in the sand, but it had certainly slowed him down. What had been mere starlight when he started climbing had long since given way to what passed for day on balmy Kessel, the harsh red glare of desert canyons tearing at his eyes without offering a hint of warmth in return. But the razor-sharp winds of his ride in were nowhere to be found, and although his eyes were still overloaded from the Chaos-blessed sunlight he'd never trade it for the tunnels he'd left behind.

He let his head loll to glare back down the shaft. The only reprieve he'd gotten from dragging himself along by his sticky damp pads had been when he met one of the cross-tunnels that evidently honeycombed the mines, craggy natural things that either absorbed the light from above or else somehow emitted their own. They'd come from all directions, some even threatening to swallow him up from below, and he hadn't been able to convince himself to touch their rims at all. Something could have lashed out and dragged him in screaming, or sensed his vibrations and chased him up the walls, or – he stamped those thoughts down. _I got out and I'm in the sunlight now_. _It's over_.

But it wasn't over, of course. Unless some Imperial patrol ship spotted him he'd have to get off this plateau by himself, and waiting for rescue would just seal him away in the caves again – assuming he didn't simply get blasted for his escape attempt. With a weary sigh he rocked himself upright and staggered to his feet. _No point in crawling, I guess_. _Not unless I have to_.

Fortunately it didn't seem like that was the case anymore. The open air, thin and frigid as it was, had pumped a little life back into him and he was able to keep his balance even with one tail sticking stiffly out behind him. _Helps that I'm limping with both legs, I guess_. There were a few spectacular crags around him, spirelike peaks in the distance sculpted by centuries or more of erosion and asteroid strikes, but for the most part the kit kept his eyes on the ground in front of him. His head was too heavy to lift anymore.

At least looking at his feet gave him something to think about too. _Man, I'm filthy_. _Knuckles would totally dunk me in the nearest pool he could find_. _And probably have a heart attack when he realized I wasn't complaining_. For all that he loved swimming Tails had done his best to avoid actual grooming when he could talk his friends out of it, a childhood tradition owing more to some sense of honor than anything rational. Either way, his fur was a mix of silver and thick clotted red where it was left at all, and where he'd been worn down by his ordeal the skin was caked just as thick with the same colors. Maybe a trained eye could find something artistic in the patterns, or a geological history lesson in the layers, but Tails would gladly clog every pipe in his workshop to get his natural fluff back.

Still, perhaps it was the matted filth that was keeping him so warm, however relative a term that was right then. The smooth rocks beneath him curved down into the canyon he'd rode through the first time, sloping gently at first and then suddenly vanishing into a polished cliff. Getting down would usually have been trivial for Tails, but with one of his namesakes immobilized it would take some much more creative maneuvering he wasn't sure he had the energy – or the grip – to pull off anymore. _Look on the bright side, Tails_. _If you slip you'll get down there that much faster_. Shaking his head at his weak attempt at humor the weary fox felt his way towards the cliffside and began looking for purchase.

He found something much better than purchase. Whether through the erosion of a soft vein of rock or the artifice of some work team there was a rough-hewn path down through the edge of the cliff. Even more fortuitous, it truly was _inside_ the cliff edge, with a swooping spine shielding him from view. It wouldn't have hidden a human very well, but Tails was more than small enough to fit under the rim and between the sides. Incredibly soft sandstone dust poured downhill at his touch and Tails just dug his heels in and rode the wave as best he could. There were a few hard jumps to make, true, and a few sharp corners and sharper rock shards, but now that he was out in the light those were practically thrills. _Guess Sonic really did rub off on me_ _!_

Tails stumbled towards the hangar entrance with a grin swallowing his face whenever it wasn't disrupted by hard coughing. Then he rounded a hairpin turn in the pass and his happiness rushed away like the loose sand. The noise had been muffled by the mesa in the way; even now it was fainter than he remembered from the tunnels. But the lights were unmistakable. Below him, green and red blaster bolts hurtled out across the steel landing pad to smoke against the shields of one of the folding-wing shuttles or into the canyon walls. Tails couldn't be completely sure from this blind angle, but it was obvious that the Rebel troops who'd come to rescue Wedge were still there. And that thought terrified him.

 _It's been hours since we split up. How have they not found him yet?_ It was easy for the fox to come up with reasons. Booby traps. Soldiers. Loose monsters from the mines. More rockfalls. The images, and a few twinges of remembered pain, flashed through him. "No. Not going to think like that." _Liar._ "He's going to be fine. His," the fox's already raspy voice clogged his aching throat, "his friends are here for him." _I really made a mistake, didn't I?_

 _This is a bad time to worry about that now, though, Tails._ He could feel another layer to his headache bubbling up through his brain as the argument started. _Where's your ship, for one? And even if you could get there, where's home?_

 _And I know whose fault all of that is. It's sure not the Empire's decision._

"That's enough out of you two!" Tails snarled aloud, totally unconcerned with the way the words tore chunks out of his dry and dusty mouth. "We –" _whoops,_ " _I_ can deal with that all later. Right now, there's a...a friend here who still needs help. You coming?" he asked his recalcitrant brain with all the irritation Sonic and Knuckes had ever taught him to express.

Then he vaulted over the crumbly stone wall and down towards the platform without waiting for a reply.

* * *

It took Tails about a fifth of a second to realize the reasons why that had been a stupid move. First and most urgently, the only reason his tail wasn't still weeping fluids was because it was completely caked in grime. He hardly had enough muscle control left to wag it, let alone fly with it! For all the lift he could get by spinning his namesakes, Tails wasn't the least bit aerodynamic even back when he'd been getting daily runs in with Sonic – or dashing away from robot armies, more often than not. Gliding was purely a fantasy.

Second, the platform was directly beneath him, true, but it was also the center of a massive firefight. Even if he could slow his velocity to something less terminal, Tails doubted he'd have any sort of choice in his landing site. And with his leg and tail so injured, even making a safe landing wasn't nearly the certainty it had always been. _Not something I've had to think about in six years now. Since Sonic came along and stopped me needing to wrestle coconut palms._

And third, the air was every bit as thin and frigid as he'd nearly forgotten from his tram ride across. He was already hyperventilating just to keep his brain working – _though maybe that's not as worthwhile as normal,_ is it _you two?_ Adding panic to the mix, either from the perfectly terrifying situation he'd put himself in or the slowly dawning realization that he'd breached the pressurized caverns and exposed all of the slave workers trapped down there to the barely breathable surface air, would just mean he suffocated in open air long before crashing. _Which, again, might be a good thing_.

As it happened, though, one of those problems seemed ready to solve the other two for him. The razor wind hadn't been purely a product of the high-speed tram; instead, it seemed tied more to the canyon itself. Or maybe the shuttle and the pocket-sized ground war were stirring it up. Either way, spastic updrafts hoisted the little fox higher into the air as they passed, long tentacles of pressure flailing up from the smooth-worn valley floor to grope blindly for the sky before crashing down over the lip. Tails spun almost in place, flier's instincts helping him shift his weight to stay centered over the platform as he made his gradual descent. Even his bloody ribbon of a tail pulled its weight, spinning far slower than it should have but still fast enough to let him do more than drift with the eddying air currents.

He was still dizzy though.

The platform had been much, much farther away than he'd thought when he'd jumped, but after an agonizing minute he was finally drawing close. Close enough to clearly make out individual soldiers, white plastic – _plas_ toid, _rather_ , he reminded himself with that strange part of his mind still able to hold onto information like that – clumped behind barricades in the cave mouth while people in bizarre black and white teardrop helmets huddled into whatever cover they could find out close to the shuttle. Many weren't in cover at all, just blazing away at the Empire's troops in a frantic effort to avoid getting shot. Tails nodded a little, remembering that "technique" from all of his times fighting Eggman's bots in the Tornado, or from battling the...the... _Think it, Tails. It's okay to remember the name._

He took that thought under advisement, but refocused entirely on about the only people on the platform who weren't in constant motion. A man in a ruffled concrete-grey suit crouched behind the shuttle's boarding ramp, safely armored from the raging battle. At least, Tails assumed he was a man; in any case, he had much the same physique as Wedge had, only far less emaciated. And he was practically spitting into a walkie-talkie – _no, they're called coms in this part of the universe, remember_? Two others in the regular outfits flanked him, peeking out from behind the ramp to contribute a little more firepower, and _that one sees me! Great!_

 _Except it isn't_. The man brought his blaster up, a long rugged rifle that looked like it had been duct-taped together from two or three Earth guns, and leisurely lined up a shot on the falling fox. Tails sucked in a big breath to shout that he was friendly, but the air was so thin here, and his throat hurt so much just breathing now. His whole world narrowed to the man's trigger finger.

Without warning even himself, Tails juked hard to the left. His bloodied tail somehow still stayed loyal, flying him smoothly towards the deck as a sustained barrage of blaster fire clawed through the sky around him. His vision blurred, no longer focused on the one guard yet unable to find purchase anywhere else, but from the flashes at the corners of his eyes he was able to realize the man he'd watched wasn't the one who'd just shot him. He had no idea how he'd managed to avoid all that fire from his blind spot, but he had neither the time nor energy to complain.

 _And no pain tolerance either_. He slammed into the metal deck shoulder-first, bouncing hard and feeling both tails bruise as they continued to whip against it. The fresh damage he'd inflicted on himself and the platform's ice burn were an incandescent orange against his eyelids, but like lightning the flash dimmed to nothing more than a footnote. _My brain's not working too well to begin with, but it's not doing any worse now_.

That was a very relative claim though. As Tails staggered to his feet, tails and left shoulder limp and useless, it dawned on him once again how tired he was. Weakness spiraled through his head, pooling in his neck where it choked his thoughts and motions to a clumsy trickle. He wasn't even sure he was standing up, not without focusing all his attention on that and not the war going on around him. At least it seemed like both sides had written him off as a threat, which suited the faltering fox just fine.

He was finally upright now; his eyes and ears scanned the platform blankly. Everything he saw and heard reached his brain preprocessed, chunked up into little packets that jerked around in his head like an antique TV monitor. Little ruby blaster bolts stuttered back and forth, nobody bothering with stunners or ion guns or sonics... _Sonic._ _Sonic would have bothered._ He _could have stopped this without anyone else getting...well, killed. There'd be lots of headaches to go around after though!_ The slideshow in Tails' eyes smoothed out, a soft green filter sliding over everything, replacing Kessel's sullen overcast with the colors of home. Not quite the sparkling emerald of his big bro's eyes, though. More like... _Cosmo._ The fox relaxed, almost hypnotized as memories of warmth and friendship pumped through his entire body. _I promise I'll do better this time._

Then his eyes shot open wide as a blaster bolt caught his already crippled shoulder, pitching him onto his back and, inevitably, onto his raw tailflesh. Through the sudden pain he saw the diamond of light continue streaking off into the canyon – _a near miss then_ – but all of the pleasure he'd just felt gushed out through the cauterized gouge it had burned into him. _Maybe it's floating out in the air there, so the soldiers can catch a little?_ The little fox giggled as he struggled through the pain, knowing that the laugh was delirious.

Though his body was brutalized, it still knew far better than his mind that he still had a duty on the battlefield. He was little more than a passenger inside himself now, thoughts lagging seconds behind what was going on around him. Which was probably for the best; there was no way he'd have ever consented to turret up on his abused tails and spring-launch himself into the middle of the firefight.

No way either that he'd have been able to decide where to launch _to_. As his brain caught up with the action he wondered what clue had carried him towards that particular trooper, a tabby-patterned felinoid with tapered ears poking out through slits at the back of his helmet. Maybe there was something about his posture, or his angle or something one of the stormtroopers was doing in the distance. _Chaos, maybe I just picked him because he looks like me!_ It was all academic anyway; Tails was already in motion, touching down from his initial leap and skidding through the jagged silt. He continued his charge in a frantic zigzag he'd never have been able to plan out ahead of time. It was guided purely by instinct, instincts honed by years of bullies and battlebots, and he blessed Sonic for helping him survive long enough to learn that.

Something changed again. It teased around the edge of his senses, some flash or noise or jostle or charge in the air, something he probably never would be able to identify. Whatever it was launched him into a graceless plop over the rebels between him and the cat-man, landing on his helmet with all six limbs. They hit the ground with matching yowls.

Tails felt the blasters pointing at him, felt claws coming out underneath him, but his ears were filled with the chirp of one Imperial rifle in particular. Though his face was buried in the man he'd tackled and blaster bolts gave off almost no waste heat, he knew there was a stream of red light filling the air right above them. And that even despite his lunge the beams were coming closer anyway, with nothing in the way to shield him.

And then they stopped. The blaster fire in his ears went quiet so abruptly he had to swallow to pop them. The little fox resolutely refused to think of the most likely reason why the gunner had stopped. _He...he just got distracted. Yeah. That makes sense._ Why couldn't people settle their differences through fistfights like civilized Mobians?

Without waiting for a "thank you" or a "damn you," Tails unwound himself from the shocked rebel and sprang back into the madness. He was full of objections, his shredded calves and cramping lungs leading the rebellion against the rest of him, but their selfishness melted away when he saw where he'd taken himself this time. The woman was twice his size and weighted down with an armored jacket, which from the way she writhed and gasped on the ground had been the best decision she'd ever made. But the weight was immaterial to his surging energy. Tails stooped down low and hoisted her onto his less damaged shoulder, good tail bracing the parts of her his arms couldn't grip.

And then the pain caught up with him. He froze as all of the sensations of the last _minutes? Hours? Seconds?_ caught up with him. Froze in the middle of the battlefield, with every gun on both sides undoubtedly swinging towards the strange interloper, or so he knew he'd see if his eyes saw anything but black. His terrified brain delegated once again, giving his body full control since it seemed to at least know what it was doing.

Tails had no recollection of crossing the meters-kilometers-millimeters to the shuttle, only a dim realization that there was a thinner, warmer metal with much less sand under his pawpads now, and that his charge was still safely writhing. A figure stepped out of the soft white light inside the shuttle, wearing the same grey fatigues as the rebels the fox had been rescuing, and stretched out his arms for the wounded woman.

They said something to him, something his ears were too overloaded to process, and stepped in close to take the weight off his back. It was only when they pulled away that Tails even registered the burning prick in his thigh.

The last thing he saw was a blue-capped needle in the medic's hand, and then a comforting mint ocean filled his eyes.


End file.
